The World and Everything in It: May 14, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Joel Bales, from Knoxville, Tennessee. I retired at the end of April after completing a 45-year career in military healthcare. I hope you enjoy today's program!

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! The UN supports Palestinian membership despite U.S. and Israeli concerns.

ERDAN: This shameless body has chosen to reward modern day Nazis with rights and privileges?

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, a community deals with the imprisonment of a local pro-lifer.

OLIVIA PORTER: I was very heartbroken that we were losing such a great person.

And a new book on what led up to the U.S. Civil War.

MAST: It’s Tuesday, May 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump trial » Donald Trump says prosecutors are coming up empty in New York’s so-called hush money case against him. He spoke to reporters from a Manhattan courtroom:

TRUMP: They have not come close to proving fraud, or that any fraud has taken place. There's no fraud here. There's no crime here.

His former attorney Michael Cohen is expected to take the stand again today.

On Monday, he testified that he arranged payments on Trump’s behalf  to silence stories about extramarital affairs ahead of the 2016 election.

Trump says the alleged affairs never happened. And he strongly denies charges that he improperly passed off one such payment as a valid business expense.

Some Republican lawmakers gathered outside the courtroom on Monday in a show of support for Trump. Sen. Tommy Tuberville …

TUBERVILLE:  I'm glad to stand by President Trump. I'm a friend of his. I'm here more as a friend than a, than a, uh, backing him as candidate, as president.

And Sen. J.D. Vance said Cohen’s testimony should carry no weight … with the now-disbarred attorney having pleaded guilty several years ago to lying under oath.

Israel Independence, Memorial Days, Netanyahu » Israel, today marks its national Day of Independence one day after observing the country’s Memorial Day. With grief and anger still gripping the country from the October Hamas terror attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there is no alternative but to destroy the terror group.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

He said “It's either us–Israel–or them–the Hamas monsters. Either continued existence, liberty, security and prosperity - or destruction, slaughter, and enslavement.”

Republicans push back on White House criticism of Israel » And some Republicans on Capitol Hill are firing back at the Biden administration after Secretary of State Tony Blinken sharply criticized Israel on Sunday. Blinken said the United States would like to see Israel get out of Gaza. Sen. Rick Scott …

SCOTT:  What would you do? I mean, they wouldn't, they're just, they're killing your fellow citizens and they're telling him Blinken and Biden want Israel to get out of Gaza. I mean, who's going to go in? Who's going to help? Is the United States going to go in and do anything? So, I mean, this makes no sense.

But National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the White House does believe that some countries are taking their criticism of Israel a bit too far.

SULLIVAN: We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and well-being of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition.

Several countries have called for Israel to be tried for genocide in Gaza.

The White House says Hamas started the war and could end it immediately if it chose to.

Russia new offensive in Ukraine » Sullivan also spoke to reporters Monday about efforts to get newly-approved military aid into Ukraine as quickly as possible.

He said Moscow’s forces continue to take aim at targets with no military value.

SULLIVAN: Russia has continued to push the envelope in terms of just the brutality and intensity of its campaign. It has sought more targets across a wider range of Ukraine. Most of them are civilians.

Sullivan said the Biden administration is trying to speed up deliveries of weapons and ammo as Russia expands the battlefield along Ukraine’s northern border.

SOUND: [Explosion and evacuation]

Police evacuated hundreds of residents from villages in the Kharkiv region with Russian troops on the move.

China Tariffs » President Biden will announce today that he’s massively expanding tariffs on electric vehicles from China by some reports even quadrupling them.

The White House is also raising tariffs on Chinese semiconductors and solar equipment.

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

PIERRE: They play by a different set of rules, and this is what we know to be clear. And it has been unfair and anti-competitive economic practices.

The Biden administration worries that China is overproducing products like EVs and says the increased duties will help protect American workers.

SOUND: [Loud boom]

Baltimore Bridge » Demolition crews in Baltimore bringing down the largest remaining chunk of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge Monday.

It’s a big step toward freeing up the grounded container ship that crashed into the bridge back in March and has been stuck in the wreckage ever since.

That has largely choked off a major shipping lane but Maryland Governor Wes Moore says…

MOORE: We're now very close to fully clearing the channel, and we're already getting large ships in and out of the port of Baltimore.

The state is working with the federal government on the far bigger challenge of rebuilding the bridge.

Canadian wildfires » A massive wildfire is threatening at least one town in Western Canada.

British Columbia Emergency Management leader Bowinn Mah …

MAH:  In light of the elevated risk in and near Fort Nelson, I am asking those who have not yet evacuated to please do so.

Roughly 5,000 residents have evacuated the small town.

Wildfires in Alberta are creating an air quality hazard not only in Canada, but also in the U.S., in the Upper Midwest and Great Plains states.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: What’s required for a two-state solution in the Middle East. Plus, Pro-life legislation.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 14th day of May, 2024.

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

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

First up on The World and Everything in It: inconsistency at the United Nations.

On Friday, the UN General Assembly voted to give Palestinians new rights and privileges and reevaluate a Palestinian bid for full membership.

Nations from Australia to Venezuela supported the resolution. Here’s Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong.

PENNY WONG: Australia no longer believes that recognition can only come at the end of a peace process. It could occur as part of a peace process.

MAST: But the U.S. opposed the resolution on the grounds that Israel and the Palestinians need to work out a peace deal before the U.N. can recognize a Palestinian state.

And Israel’s Ambassador Gilad Erdan drew attention to the timing of the measure.

GILAD ERDAN: This week, only this week, Israel commemorated Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and it is during our sacred week that this shameless body has chosen to reward modern day Nazis with rights and privileges?

EICHER: Only 9 nations opposed the resolution…including Israel and the U.S. Twenty-five more abstained, and the remaining 143 voted in favor.

MAST: Joining us now to talk about this and more is Will Inboden. He served during the George W. Bush administration as a member of the national security council staff. He now teaches at the University of Florida. He’s also a regular contributor to World Opinions.

Will, good morning!

WILL INBODEN: Good morning. Good to be with you.

MAST: Will, What does the resolution say, and does it accomplish anything concrete?

INBODEN: It's pretty meaningless, Lindsay. I think this is largely empty posturing, which the U.N. specializes in, unfortunately. The Palestinians are still the technical term is "non-member state observer mission." So this essentially says that their representative is welcome to give speeches and make statements on the floor of the U.N., but it doesn't give them formal status as a real nation states. It doesn't give them membership on the Security Council, which is where the more binding U.N. decisions are made. So it was largely a symbolic vote by, you know, most of the countries in the world who belong to the U.N., to show some sort of moral support for the Palestinian cause, and try to isolate Israel, but it really changes very little in substance.

EICHER: Is there a scenario where the symbol becomes substance and some future state of Palestine would become a full U.N. member? What would that mean if that happened?

INBODEN: For that to happen, it would need to be approved by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. would veto it. So even though the Biden administration is not as supportive of Israel now as they previously were, the Biden administration statement on why the U.S. voted against this made clear that we would veto any more formal steps to grant statehood to the Palestinians. And the other part of the important U.S. position is that, you know, we we don't want to see statehood until the Palestinians are ready to exercise the responsibilities of a state. You know, this U.N. General Assembly vote gets the sequencing backwards. You know, you don't declare statehood for someone and then hope that they develop the capacity to be a state. Rather, you wait until they develop the capacity to be a state, which is, you know, responsible sovereign governance over a defined territory of showing that you can police your own own borders, and you will be at peace with your your neighbors, and you're not going to be supporting terrorism, and you have a viable economy and all those things. The Palestinians don't have any of that right now. And they need to develop that before there's a viable path to being a real state.

MAST: Well, I imagine the U.N.’s doing this now to send a message about the war in Gaza, many branding it genocide and regularly citing U.N. numbers to bolster the point—we’ve been hearing 25,000 women and children dead. But over the weekend, the U.N. cut that number nearly in half!

Why hasn’t that gotten more attention?

INBODEN: Yeah, this is another example of, I think, some of the distorted mainstream media coverage of this war is the fact that this, you know, new study just came out over the weekend showing that the number of civilian casualties among the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—especially women and children—is much less than earlier reports, half earlier reports had been. And so the mainstream media will often, you know, trumpet the most extreme estimates or the largest estimates of civilian casualties. And yet when those are shown to be false, they, they don't do a good job of correcting the record or, you know, highlighting this new report showing that they were much lower.

EICHER: Final question here: So the U.S. voted against the resolution, but continues to withhold weapons from Israel, hoping to prevent an attack on Rafah. So what do you think the Biden administration’s trying to do here?

INBODEN: Well, what what President Biden's main goal seems to be right now is trying to get reelected. And I think we need to see his case withholding of these really important munitions to Israel as largely a political move because his progressive left wing base has increasingly turned against Israel. And he's feeling that that pressure right now as the presidential election heats up. You know, in strategic terms, the Biden administration would also say that they want to reduce Palestinian civilian casual to use and restrain some of Israel's military endeavors. But here, our listeners need to really appreciate this very important point: Hamas has a goal of as many Palestinian civilian deaths as possible. I know that may sound perverse, but that's what they're trying to do. Israel has a goal of minimizing Palestinian civilian deaths. However, Israel also needs to destroy and defeat Hamas. And so Israel has been going about that in, I think, overall pretty careful ways of trying to minimize those Palestinian civilian casualties. But Hamas keeps using the civilians as human shields, and so it's placed Israel in this awful dilemma. But, you know, I support the Rafah offensive. I think Biden's made a bad mistake in preventing those weapons deliveries to Israel, because they really need them to be able to finish the job. And the best outcome for the Palestinian people would be this war ending as soon as possible in terms favorable for Israel, so the Palestinian people will be freed of the scourge of Hamas.

MAST: Will Inboden is a former staff member of the National Security Council now teaching at the University of Florida. Will, thank you for your analysis!

INBODEN: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next, state-level abortion laws.

About a week and a half ago, Arizona repealed a comprehensive pro-life law enacted in 1864 that protected all the unborn.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: The state recodified the law twice—including after the Roe versus Wade decision. Nonetheless, abortion proponents attacked it as a “zombie law” and garnered enough support to repeal it.

AUDIO: [Cheering while Hobbs signs the decision.]

EICHER: The repeal, signed by Governor Katie Hobbs, won’t take effect until 90 days after the current legislative session ends, and that means the protective law could stay on the books till this fall.

MAST: Meanwhile in Florida, that state’s Heartbeat Protection Act took effect May 1st … protecting the unborn after 6 weeks gestation. Democrats went on the offensive, campaigning for a proposed amendment to Florida’s constitution. That’ll be on the ballot in November.

EICHER: What do these abortion laws in battleground states mean for the November election?

Joining us now to talk about them is Ingrid Duran of the National Right to Life Committee.

MAST: Ingrid, good morning. Let’s start with Arizona, how were abortion advocates able to pass this repeal so quickly? It was just at the beginning of April that the state supreme court ruled that the 1864 law was enforceable, and now it’s been repealed. What does this mean for the unborn?

INGRID DURAN: Yeah that is an excellent question, and similar to the post-Dobbs response from our opposition. It is a page out of their playbook, where they are saying, like, “Oh, if this law goes into effect, women will die, women will not be able to get care.” And some, you know, unfortunately, pro-life Republicans fell under that pressure and changed their vote. And what it means now, after that goes into effect, Arizona currently has a law that will protect the unborn child at 15 weeks. And so that will be the law in Arizona. And, I think, it'll just be up to the pro-life movement in Arizona to continue to educate on the humanity of the unborn child, and some of the support programs that we have for their mothers, and just start to increase the visibility and the humanity of the unborn. So that, you know, you can have all of the pro-life laws in the world and/or in a state, but if you don't convince the people that this fellow human being is, you know, can feel pain, has a heartbeat, is worthy of protection and deserves it, then it's for nothing. And so, you know, they will still have a good 15 week law there. But the work is never over.

MAST: Let’s turn now to Florida. What is at stake there for lawmakers and voters this summer heading into the 2024 election.

DURAN: Yeah, well, I think for Florida, it'll be very important to understand what the Florida law does what it doesn't do. And so responding to some of the fear mongering that is going on there, we're gonna have to dispel those myths and let them know that the extremism of the ballot measure that would allow abortions for any reason in Florida would also have the effect. And we see this in Michigan, we see this in Ohio. It will also have the effect where the legislature cannot even pass protective laws or regulating abortion at all, when you have this, so called right to abortion, you know, ingrained into the state constitution; and also the existing protections like parental involvement, conscious protections for healthcare workers who choose not to provide elective abortions, these would be at risk. In Ohio they had an informed consent law that gives abortion-minded mothers an opportunity to see the developing unborn child, a waiting period prior to making her decision, this life-and-death decision. And there has already been a challenge to repeal that law that has been standing for so long, that has been proven to change the minds and hearts of some of these abortion-minded women. And so Florida would see the same fate where their parental involvement could be at risk. Health care, conscience protections for health care workers would be at risk, as well as other laws, whether it's born alive, it would make it very hard to introduce or pass any, any law that would be reasonable to protect the unborn child to regulate abortion or also to protect and support women.

MAST: Ingrid, final question. Are you generally encouraged or discouraged by the direction of state level protections for the unborn?

DURAN: Oh, I am an eternal optimist, and so I'm always encouraged. I've been doing this work since 1995. And so I've seen different administrations at the federal level, different governments at the state level, and you kind of see a wave of, you know. Sometimes there are many pro life wins, and then sometimes there are not. And so I stay encouraged, because I know that with the spreading of information of the pro life message that we're able to really impact society and, and just, you know, show them that life is a beautiful choice. And we see that now, even as you see more and more unborn children who are surviving, or being born at earlier stages in pregnancy, were in the 1970s. This would be unheard of, you know, having a 20-22 week baby born and thriving afterwards. So I stay encouraged, you know, and I know that sometimes it does get difficult. And I also welcome the challenges because even in the challenges, there's a lot to learn.

MAST: Ingrid Duran is the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. Ingrid, thank you for your time!

DURAN: Thank you, Lindsay! It was a pleasure.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Lexi Bogan showed up last summer at Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, with persistent headaches and blurred vision. Turned out she had a brain tumor … and she needed treatment fast. Doctors were able to remove it and she’s doing okay, but Dr. Konstantina Svokos says …

DR. SVOKOS: From that surgery, due to the pressure on the cranial nerves that control vocal cord function and throat muscles and the tongue function, she had trouble speaking afterwards.

She still does.

LEXI BOGAN: When I go somewhere I would have to go … I have someone that can talk for me.

She’s saying she’d have to take a friend with her or her mom in case she encountered someone who couldn’t understand her.

But now her care team built an AI tool with a small sample of her voice pre-tumor. Lexi types, the phone speaks.

BOGAN: It feels amazing to get my voice back because it’s almost like a part of my identity was taken away when I lost my voice.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 14th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: pro-life activism and federal law.

Today, a federal judge will begin the sentencing of nine pro-life activists for blocking the entrance to a D.C. abortion business four years ago. Their goal was to save lives from abortion that day. They face the possibility of up to 11 years in federal prison.

EICHER: The government has recommended shorter sentences for each of the defendants, most of whom have been incarcerated since August of 2023.

WORLD’s Leah Savas traveled to a small town in Michigan to see how the absence of one of these pro-life activists has affected the community she left behind.

AUDIO: [Sound of walking into store, door closing]

LEAH SAVAS, REPORTER: Inside the Linden bookstore Beloved Books, 19-year-old owner Olivia Porter is ringing up a customer.

AUDIO: [Sound of customer checking out, music in the background]

Children’s classics and picture books line the shelves and bright paintings hang on the walls. Porter says the store still bears marks of its longtime former owner, Heather Idoni.

PORTER: She always just had such a joyous spirit about her. And so you can just feel that in here, when you walk in. As far as like the books go, you can tell that she hand-picked every single one of these.

Some customers don’t know why Idoni is gone. But others do.

PORTER: I was very heartbroken that we're losing such a great person around town, because everybody loved her and loves her now to this day. We all just think it's very unfair that she is where she is right now.

Idoni is in jail. She has been for almost nine months. In August, a jury found her guilty of federal crimes for blocking the entrance to an abortion facility.

One day in March 2022, the government unsealed the indictment in that case. Idoni’s pro-life activism collided with her community in Linden when FBI vehicles pulled up outside of her bookstore that morning.

AUDIO: [Walking into the barber shop]

Mary Spooner is an employee at the barber shop across from Beloved Books. She was here that March Wednesday in 2022.

SPOONER: There was like five or 10 officers just like walking around the building milling around. And all of a sudden they walk out with Heather, handcuffs behind her back, putting her in the cop car. And she was driven away.

Spooner was shocked. She’s known Idoni since she was young, growing up in the same homeschool circles as Idoni’s sons. After she started working at the barber shop, Spooner would see Idoni across the street almost every day, often sweeping her sidewalks. In 2022, Idoni ran a Ukraine relief center out of her store, collecting funds and supplies to send overseas.

SPOONER: We all know this, we all know that she's seriously community minded and not the type to get arrested for anything real.

These days, Spooner doesn’t know where she stands on the abortion issue. But she’s participated in Black Lives Matter protests and takes Idoni’s charges personally.

SPOONER: It was very sobering. I'm just gonna say, as someone who protests myself, the thought that you could get arrested in this country for using your freedom of speech is just sickening.

Officials released Idoni later that day. But within the next twelve months, the government charged her in two other similar cases. Idoni’s possible prison sentence surpassed three decades and this year, she'll be 60 years old. When Spooner heard the bookstore was closing, she was concerned. What other business would move in? Who would run it?

SPOONER: Is it going to be someone who actually is going to take care of what's going on in the community, because that's something that Heather did. She, in a lot of ways, helped others…

That was a year ago. When then-18-year-old Olivia Porter heard the news, her heart sank.

PORTER: And so then I sat down with her. And I was like, Is there any way that I could take over the store?

Idoni showed Porter the ropes around the store until she headed off to D.C. for her first jury trial. Idoni was expecting a guilty verdict, but she also thought she’d be able to come home before her sentencing. That’s not what happened. After the jury found Idoni and the others guilty, the judge ordered them taken into custody, saying they’d been found guilty of violent crimes.

Idoni has called Porter a few times from jail.

PORTER: She actually sounded very joyful. Like, if I was in that situation, I'd be very, like scared. And but you couldn't tell that from the way she's spoke.

AUTOMATED VOICE: Heather Idoni, an inmate at the Livingston County Jail Howell, Michigan, to accept this call press five.

In March, Idoni called me from a jail not far from her family and bookstore. When she arrived from a different facility, she learned the jail didn’t take in-person visits.

IDONI: I think in all the six months I've been in jail, that's the first time I really just cried my eyes out.

But Idoni said she’s not ashamed of what she did to stand up for unborn babies. She would do it again.

IDONI: I can't ask for just joy and no pain, and every single bit of pain is something else I'm offering up to share the Lord's sufferings. I may whine a little or cry, but I don't resist. You know, whatever the Lord has for me. It's to his honor and glory. And I'm good with it.

Still, Idoni’s absence leaves a gap. Here’s Spooner.

SPOONER: They're stealing from this community... So we don't lose the bookstore but we lose out on Heather. We lose out on her and see is irreplaceable. I just—ugh.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas in Linden, Michigan.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: WORLD Opinions commentator Daniel Suhr recommends a new book of “suspenseful” nonfiction on the Civil War.

DANIEL SUHR: In Erik Larson’s new book The Demon of Unrest, the bestselling author describes his process of writing. First, he discovers an “inherently suspenseful” true story and then he treats that story like a Christmas tree, “finding and hanging the shiny ornaments, the revealing details hidden deep within archives, diaries, and memoirs.” Larson previously wrote one book dealing with true crime at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. In 2011, he published another on the Nazis in Berlin before World War II. This time he writes about America’s descent into civil war in 1861, focusing on the six months before the fall of South Carolina’s Fort Sumter.

In short, punchy chapters, Larson tells of a former congressman from Illinois named Abe Lincoln. He also writes about a wild-eyed secessionist named Edmund Ruffin and a philandering U.S. senator from South Carolina named James Henry Hammond. 

When Lincoln is elected president in November 1860, he does not take office until March 1861. Eventually, Lincoln begins his train journey eastward to his inauguration, with Pinkerton detectives to protect him from rumored assassins. The bodyguards can’t allay Lincoln’s other fear: that he and his team are not up to the job. As Lincoln settles into Washington, Jefferson Davis and other Confederates are launching their new government. For both, the question of Fort Sumter looms large: Would the federal government resupply the besieged base? Would the Confederates force the issue by firing the first shots?

As Lincoln vacillates, we see the men inside the island redoubt hold their own through privation and isolation. Meanwhile, for Confederate leaders, “Fort Sumter was an evil that had to be dealt with, and quickly.” Larson has a strong subtext about the South’s addiction to notions of chivalry and dignity. He notes the North’s “naivete about the crisis and in particular about the power of honor in shaping Southern attitudes.”

The crisis reaches a head in April 1861 when Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard attacks and overmore three thousand mortar shells and cannonballs rain down on the fort. Surprisingly, though the fort falls into Confederate hands, there’s not one casualty among the hundredeighty or so federal troops who held her ramparts.

Throughout the book, Larson offers plenty of entertaining anecdotes–those “ornaments” he so treasures. For instance, one New York diarist denounced Lincoln’s lack of resolve this way: “The bird of our country is a debilitated chicken, disguised in eagle feathers….” These gems from the archives are often matched by Larson’s own prose. Take this line: “Lincoln on a sofa was like a ship’s mast on a barstool, poised in an uneasy equilibrium between relaxation and structural collapse.” 

When Lincoln’s inaugural train stopped in Tolono, Illinois, he told the crowd: “Let us believe, as some poet has expressed it: ‘Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.’” The clouds of war would hang over America for four bloody years, and the skies stayed overcast for some years thereafter. But eventually the sunshine did break through, and today tourists visit Fort Sumter year round. They would be well served to read Larson’s book and fully appreciate the history of the place.

I’m Daniel Suhr.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the Supreme Court has some big cases to decide this Spring…we’ll talk about them on Washington Wednesday.

And getting an organ transplant can be a gift of life, but recovering from one is tough. We’ll meet the real-life family behind the film Ordinary Angels.

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

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 psalmist writes: “Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.” —Psalm 119:34-35

Go now in grace and peace.

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