The World and Everything in It - May 17, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A high-school student curses her school on social media and gets suspended. That’s not news until it becomes a federal case, and it has. The U.S. Supreme Court must decide where school authority begins and ends.

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

Also today, a big answer to listeners’ big questions about the danger of inflation in the economy. That is the Monday Moneybeat.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, the dramatic life of a beloved children’s author:

REICHARD: It’s Monday, May 17th. 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: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Walensky defends CDC mask guidance changes » Mask confusion in the United States. That’s what some say the CDC created last week when it made an abrupt pivot and changed its mask guidance.

On Sunday, the agency’s director, Rochelle Walensky, worked to set the record straight.

She explained why she defended the CDC’s previous position on masks in public just days before changing it.

WALENSKY: I can tell you it certainly would’ve been easier if the science had evolved a week earlier and I didn’t have to go to Congress making those statements, but I’m delivering the science as the science is delivered to the medical journals. And you know it evolved over this last week.

She said the latest data showing new cases and hospitalizations dropping, and deaths falling to the lowest level in about a year, prompted the change.

But some states and businesses have complained there’s no way to know which people walking around in public are vaccinated and that the CDC’s announcement makes it tougher to get people to comply with local mask mandates.

Walensky said Sunday that more guidance is coming.

WALENSKY: This had to be the first foundational step that we made in order to update all of our guidance, thousands of pages of guidance. We need to update our school guidance, our childcare guidance, our camp guidance, our travel guidance.

The agency is now clarifying its guidance with regard to schools. It notes that children under 12 remain unvaccinated. And there isn’t enough time left in this school year to put systems in place to determine which older kids are or are not vaccinated. For those reasons, the CDC says schools should keep mask mandates in place through the summer break.

GOP’s new No.3 House leader says Republicans are united » Congresswoman Elise Stefanik insisted on Sunday that despite media reports to the contrary, the Republican Party is united.

She replaced Congresswoman Liz Cheney as the party’s No.3 leader in the House last week. In her new role as conference chair, Stefanik is in charge of guiding the party's messaging. She said that’s an easy job because, on the issues, Republicans are on the same page.

STEFANIK: We want to focus every day on exposing the border crisis, the economic crisis, and the national security crisis in the Middle East. Our focus is on safely reopening our economy getting people back to work, rather than the intent of being to stay out of work ...

Republicans voted Stefanik into the House leadership role on a vote of 134 to 46. The New York lawmaker has a moderate voting record but had strong backing from former President Trump and party leaders.

Cheney says GOP must denounce Trump election claims » House Republicans ousted Liz Cheney from leadership last week because they said her ongoing rift with Donald Trump was distracting from the party’s message.

Privately, many also feared alienating Trump supporters ahead of next year’s election.

On Sunday, Cheney said she will not stop speaking out against former President Trump’s claims that the last presidential election was stolen.

CHENEY: What’s happening right now with Donald Trump and his continued attacks on the Constitution and the rule of law is dangerous, and we all have an obligation to stand up against that.

She countered the arguments of House Republican leaders. She said the party can’t win next year if it’s embracing the—quote—“big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. That’s a term she co-opted from Trump, who has called the last election the “big lie.”

Death toll mounts in Middle East conflict »

SOUND: ROCKET

Rocket fire continued into Israel on Sunday as Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 42 people, according to Palestenian medics.

SOUND: GAZA NATS

It’s not clear how many of the dead were militants and how many were civilians. Nearly 200 people have now died through a week of fighting.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Irsraeli military’s making every effort to avoid civilian injuries and casualties. But he said Hamas militants are using civilians as human shields.

NETANYAHU: We are doing everything we can to hit the terrorists themselves, their rockets, their rocket caches and their arms, but we’re not just going to let them get away with it, and neither would you. You just imagine what would happen if you had 2,900 rockets fired on Washington and New York ...

He also addressed the targeting of a building that housed an Associated Press office. Israeli officials gave advance warning to those inside the building to evacuate before the missiles rained down.

Netanyahu said he has shared intelligence with the United States showing that the building housed a Hamas intelligence office. He said it was a legitimate target.

Meantime, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki claimed missile strikes against Israel were justified.

Al-MALKI: Our people will never surrender or forego their rights. Palestinian freedom is the only path to peace.

Hamas began firing rockets toward Jerusalem last Monday, triggering the Israeli assault on Gaza. The fighting is the fiercest seen since a 2014 Israeli-Palestinian war.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the Supreme Court debates student free speech off campus.

Plus, some literary monkey business.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday morning and welcome to another week of The World and Everything in It. It’s May 17, 2021. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

If you’ve become a first-time donor this month, thank you!

We’ve used up almost half of the $40-thousand triple match, I am told. That’s a very good response. We’re halfway into the month, so that seems about right.

REICHARD: Yes, if we stay on this pace, we’ll use it all up, which was the intention in the first place. So thank you and welcome if you’re a first-time donor.

Two of our long-time giving families wanted to match this month’s overture to new givers, so instead of a dollar for dollar match—a double match—this year it’s a triple match for first-time gifts.

EICHER: So every gift you make, two families are giving right alongside you and multiplying the support for our journalism. I encourage you to visit wng dot org slash donate and make a first-time gift of any amount and it will be multiplied by three. Talk about return-on-investment, and most importantly, we’ll use it to keep producing this program for you every day. Independent Christian journalism is so important today, so thanks for your part in keeping us strong.

REICHARD: You can give securely online. Again, only if you’ve never given before. Wng.org/donate, wng.org/donate. And thanks for considering it.

EICHER: Well, let’s get into this week’s Legal Docket.

Today, analysis of two oral arguments from April.

This first one may strike you as the kind of dispute that at best would resolve at the school-board level, certainly not in the federal courts, let alone the Supreme Court.

That said, it’s often the case that larger principles are at stake in the seemingly smallest controversies. And that’s what we have here, where a sophomore girl in high school didn’t make the varsity cheerleading team. Instead, she made junior varsity.

Her disappointment turned into spectacle. While off campus, she grabbed her phone and fired off a Snapchat picture of herself and a friend, complete with an obscene gesture and a vulgar caption directed at the school.

REICHARD: Someone screenshotted the Snap and showed it to a coach who was not amused. Foul language and unsportsmanlike conduct are no-nos under official school policy, and so the coach suspended the girl for a year from the JV squad.

The girl and her family sued, and so the Snapchat spat became a test of the First Amendment. The girl’s argument: that the constitution protects her right to this speech, regardless of how distasteful it was.

The question now is under what circumstances can public schools police off-campus speech and punish students for what they say online?

Supreme Court precedent informs this case in some ways. Here’s Chief Justice John Roberts in 2007 announcing the court’s opinion in another dispute over student speech.

ROBERTS: First, students do not shed their First Amendments rights at the school-house gate. Second, the nature of those rights has to be assessed in light of the special characteristics of the school environment. The rights of students at school are not the same as the rights of adults in the community at large.

So, a balance between student free speech and school mission. Schools may limit what students say when what they say or how they say it “substantially disrupts” the education process.

That’s the legal key: substantial disruption. But what made that case different from this one was that the older case turned on the location of that speech, as in the “schoolhouse gate.”

But now we’re talking about the internet. So where to draw that line? Where does school authority begin and where does it end in the context of digital media?

And, note that we’re not simply talking about the context of technology. I was interested in Justice Stephen Breyer’s tacit acknowledgment of social change as an important contextual consideration:

BREYER: A few years ago, a superintendent of schools, I think in San Francisco, said, you know, schools have changed a lot, the public schools, since when I went there. He said, today we don't just teach classical subjects. We're there to help the child have adequate health, in many cases, to see that he's adequately fed. In quite a few cases, we become a caretaker, and we don't want to send them home immediately because there's nobody home, and we have to plan after-school activities. There are dozens of areas that didn't used to be thought of as within the purview of the public school. Today, in many places, they are.

So, family breakdown, teenage immaturity, school mission, and the Internet. All threads that inform how the justices thought about this case.

One justice used to coach girls’ basketball. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wondered whether the coach in this case may have overreacted.

KAVANAUGH: And to show how much it means to people, you know, arguably, the greatest basketball player of all time is inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009 and gives a speech, and what does he talk about? He talks about getting cut as a sophomore from the varsity team. And he wasn't joking. He was critical 30 years later. It still bothered him. And I think that's just emblematic of how much it means to kids to make a high school team.

The school’s lawyer, Lisa Blatt, acknowledged the universal feeling of being disappointed.

But still.

BLATT: I understand that Michael Jordan was upset, but, at some point, presumably, he was respectful to his coaches, and there's a line that coaches always have to—coaches have to know their team and know what works. They have to act in the best interest of all teammates, team participants, and one of the things you learn...

KAVANAUGH: But, in the moment, you know that kid's going to be upset. And you know, you recognize that. I'm not saying this is justified necessarily. I'm not. But a year seems like a lot.

BLATT: Well, I mean, again, then you're going to be in the business of ...

KAVANAUGH: I agree. That's the problem, I agree.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, mother of 7, also has practical experience with upset children. Perhaps in lieu of being kicked off the team, she wondered, a softer discipline approach?

BARRETT: Being told, we're aware of the Snapchat. This is not good for team cohesion. This is not respectful of your coaches. If we see any of this kind of behavior on the field or at practice or undermining morale, there is going to be a consequence, but not imposing one yet. That would be okay, right?

BLATT: Yes, but there are cases where the student was asked to apologize and the student sued the coach and the school and said, “I don’t have to say I’m sorry. I have a First Amendment right not to say I’m sorry.”

Blatt argued that to limit school authority to only what’s said on campus makes no sense. A better test is the level of disruption a student causes, on or off campus. And that should include speech on social media directed at the school.

On the other side, lawyer David Cole. He argued for the angry teen that precedent favors his side. It’s simple, he argued: the school has no power over students outside of school. Justice Barrett asked: what if a student emails the school or teachers. Would that be within the school environment? Cole said yes:

COLE: Yes, because you would be—you would be subjecting yourself to the school's jurisdiction. If you're—if you call the school, if you send an e-mail to the school account, you are now subjecting yourself to the jurisdiction.

Justice Breyer wryly noted that these days, potty-mouthed teens are so common, schools would have little time left over for much else if they had to punish ugly language.

BREYER: How do I get a standard out of that? I’m frightened to death of writing a standard.

Frightened, because home is supposed to be the domain of parents. School is supposed to be the domain of teachers and administrators.

Whatever rule the court comes up with is likely to create new problems under the law of unintended consequences.

Still, in this rather murky area of the law of student free speech and discipline, schools do need guidance.

Whether the dividing line will be the location of the student, who is supervising that person, or something else is what the justices must decide.

This last case today is about how to apply President Trump’s criminal justice reform law. Congress approved it in 2018 and it’s called the First Step Act.

It let certain drug offenders get another hearing to adjust stiff prison terms. Again, it’s all about a single word, and you’ve probably guessed by now that the word is “certain,” as in certain drug offenders. Which ones?

I won’t get into the details of the case or the very dense history of sentencing reform.

Except to say that right now, big-time offenders caught with many grams of cocaine can get another hearing.

But small timers with small amounts? They cannot.

So the justices have to work out whether the First Step Act as written applies to those little guys.

The Biden administration changed the government’s stance at the last minute to support shorter sentences for the little guys. So that meant a lawyer had to come in at the last minute to defend the idea that the First Step Act did not intend for the small-time offenders to get another sentencing hearing.

Justice Breyer worried that everybody and his brother is going to want another sentencing hearing, and that’s not what the First Step Act intended.

Listen to this exchange with lawyer Adam Mortara whose job is to defend essentially the argument that Breyer makes here. Listen:

BREYER: The amounts don’t matter once it’s a felony. So there’s no reason that they should get to ask for re-sentencing. Now I just stated something that’s in my mind and I want you to think about it and admit if what I’ve said is wrong or right, or should be modified.

MORTARA: Justice Breyer, I think what you said is 100% correct. And I would further point out that reclassifying somebody as a career offender or not is precisely what is occurring in some of these resentences …

BREYER: All right. If I’m correct, why did the government argue what it argued? They know these as well as I do, probably better!

MORTARA: Your honor, I am here to explain many things. The behavior of the United States government in this case is not one of them.

Awkward! You could hear a pin drop.

Pity the lawyer who had only a few weeks to prepare for oral arguments and then faces that kind of questioning!

I doubt the justices will extend leniency to career criminals.

This, even though it’s popular across the political spectrum to reduce penalties for drug offenders. But the issue here is about the meaning of the law as it is written and where it fits into all the sentencing revisions made along the way.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen joins us for our weekly conversation and commentary on the economy. David. Good morning.

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

EICHER: David, you’ve seen all the mail that’s been coming in. Listeners are hearing and reading stories about inflation and they need to know how to interpret that. So I chose one letter to represent the many who’ve had essentially the same question, and I want to give you plenty of room to stretch out and explain it.

So here’s what the letter says: "I have been listening to the Monday Money Beat and I have heard some discussion about inflation but maybe there are different types of inflation. The type I am concerned about is rising prices and the value of savings falling. From my perspective I see shortages in many places driving up prices. The price of cars, lumber, certain grocery items, anything recreational, electronics, etc. are all going up." Skipping to the end, "[Then you] Add to that the Government giving people cash to spend making them more willing to pay higher prices and I think you get what we have. Can you clear up my thinking? I am concerned."

BAHNSEN: Yeah, that whole entire issue requires some nuance. Rising prices is not necessarily the definition of inflation; it can be a consequence to inflation. But the definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services.

And ultimately, a lot of the things people are worried about representing too much money, we've learned that the quantitative easing, this thing of the Fed adding to their balance sheet is adding reserves to the banks, but it does not add money into the system, unless a bunch of people go demand money, and there is so much activity in the economy, that then it creates new money that turns over. Because one guy is doing a transaction with another guy who then takes the money and does another, and that's called velocity. It's a complicated word. But that's where you get inflation. We have the lowest velocity in history right now.

So I think what we have to look to is this issue of rising prices and say, what's going on? And I think it's three different things. And that's the problem is when our analysis leads us to view it all as one and the same.

There are some issues that are what we call base effect. And there's just simply no denying that some of the price increases we've seen are coming off of price decreases from a year ago, and so the increase looks dramatic because of the base effect—because of what base price it is moving from 12, 13, 14 months ago. So the question is, why are prices rising now? And is there anything going on more than recovering from the low prices of a year ago? And the answer is yes.

The second factor are supply chain disruptions. That's very much at the heart of a lot of the issues this week with auto manufacturing. There is a massive delay in getting various things to the country that are involved with making various things, and therefore that lower supply and constriction on production leads to higher prices.

The third piece is indeed cyclical inflation. There are some aspects where you just have to say that housing prices, lumber prices, certain inputs that are commodity related, are in right now reflating and that we're in a bout of this cyclical inflation.

And the most important thing I can say about this topic is that the type of price increases we're seeing now are in no way contradictory to the debt-deflationary thesis that I think is much more concerning. That is, the growth in the economy that is taking away loan demand and ultimately, the growth in the future that we have spent in the present, the so-called Japanification.

This is very similar to what I think we saw post-financial crisis. We saw a continuation of it now into this COVID moment. And I think with COVID, both the fiscal side—Congress’s willingness to spend money incredibly—and the Fed's willingness to be incredibly aggressive in the medicine they gave the patient, those were both emboldened by the what they believe worked out of the financial crisis: 'Hey, we did a bunch of really crazy aggressive things. The world didn't end. Now let's do it again, but just add a few more zeroes.' That's kind of the world that we're living in.

But as far as that question that I've given a very long answer to about pricing, I think it's a real concern. But I think it's coming from three different things. And those three things are base effect, supply chain, and cyclical inflation. They all need to be understood distinctly from one another.

EICHER: I do want to ask you about the big newsy supply chain issue, which was Colonial Pipeline with the hack and the shutdown of fuel supply, and we saw gas lines. We’ve talked about the danger of cyber-hacking and we’ve seen a little reporting on the subject, but this was the big one that everybody paid attention to. What's your analysis on Colonial Pipeline and cyber hacking? And how big of a part of our economy is this going to be going forward?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think it's going to be historical. I think that there are two different events last week that are going to be world changing. People don't know how gas and oil move around in our country, Nick. They don't know because they don't need to know. They turn on the lights and electricity works. And they don't know how the electricity is necessarily been powered.

The reality is that now people know, right now there there was a whole group of people in the eastern part of the United States that went without oil and gas this week and had prices skyrocket. And the reason why is because we rely on pipelines to ship, and when and when we don't have an adequate amount of pipelines. I mean, it's just absolutely inexcusable, that one pipeline gets hacked and there wasn't another pipeline that could deliver from a competitive company. But why is there not that competition? Because we have not built enough energy infrastructure in this country. Period.

But the second piece was the the hacking the gangster criminality, and that they got paid. And then they got paid with crypto, which to me may be the very first step that brings down this utterly ineffective, disastrous, speculative tool that right now is being used only for rank criminality. So that's my view. I think it is potentially the beginning of the end of mainstreaming crypto, but I most certainly think it is the beginning of a new understanding and appreciation for pipelines in our country.

EICHER: David, I’m gonna let you go. Thank you for the thorough answer to our listeners who wrote in.

BAHNSEN: Anytime, I love doing it. We have, it's really neat how thoughtful the listeners of WORLD are. It's great.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, financial analyst and adviser. He writes at DividendCafe.com, and you can sign up to have his newsletter delivered to your email if you’re interested. Thanks again. I hope you have a terrific week. Talk soon.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: The WORLD History Book. Today, creative leaders: inventors who changed travel, artists who brought in the avant-garde, and the author who made a monkey famous. Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

SONG: CURIOUS GEORGE THEME

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: “He was a good little monkey, and always very curious.” Beloved children’s book character Curious George sprung from the imaginations of author-illustrator couple H.A. and Margret Rey. The latter half of that creative duo, Margret, was born 115 years ago this week, on May 16th, 1906.

CURIOUS GEORGE: If it was my birthday, I’d want to have a party. [MONKEY SOUNDS]

Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein grew up in Hamburg. A German Jew, she fled to Brazil to escape the Nazis in 1935. There, she married Hans Reyersbach, a salesman who dabbled in art. The couple changed their names to Margret and H.A. Rey to help the locals with pronunciation. A year later, they moved to Paris, where Hans’ animal sketches caught the eye of a publisher. The rest, of course, is history.

But Curious George’s creators faced some hurdles in bringing their vision to reality. Nazism was on the rise in Paris, and the Jewish couple realized they would need to evacuate. They bought a tandem bicycle and planned to present their French identity cards and Brazilian passports at the border. No problem with the forms, but problems with the bicycle. They couldn’t work together to make the tandem bike go. Donna Walter of the Institute for Holocaust Education explained that headstrong Margret was unwilling to rely on the tandem for escape.

WALTER: Margret did not like that. And Margret was kind of the bolder, the most outspoken one of the two...

Hans found spare parts to turn their one bike into two.

WALTER: And it was just very shortly before the Nazis invaded France that the Reys were able to escape.

Ellen Ruffin curated an exhibit on Curious George at the University of Southern Mississippi. She says Rey was a gifted illustrator, photographer, and potter, but her artistic gifts weren’t her main contribution to the books.

RUFFIN: Her talent was in developing the text of the books, coming up with the ideas, the humor, and she and H.A. Rey had fun.

After her husband’s death in 1977, Margret continued writing. She also became an author and philanthropist. She died in 1996 at the age of 90.

SONG: CURIOUS GEORGE THEME

SONG: SWIPESY CAKEWALK BY SCOTT JOPLIN

Moving now from an impish monkey to a modern marvel.

One-hundred and fifteen years ago, on May 22, 1906, the Wright brothers earned a patent for their “Flying-Machine.”

Wilbur and Orville grew up tinkering with toys and developing an interest in machinery. That tinkering led to careers in printing presses, bicycle manufacture, and eventually the invention of a glider. After that came the powered flying machine that made them famous. John Lane is an attorney with a special interest in the Wrights. He explained why the burgeoning field of aviation needed their engineering know-how.

LANE: People were crashing because no one could control the lateral back-and-forth, what’s known as rolling.

But their glider design addressed those flaws through a technology that allowed the wings to warp in response to air.

They self-financed their inventions by withdrawing money from their bicycle business. The flying machines would eventually be their livelihood, so they actively protected their intellectual property. The brothers faced accusations that their legal challenges were holding up the new industry—hampering progress—but their great grandniece, Janette Davis, told the Times-Picayune they were just protecting their investment.

DAVIS: It wasn’t that they were trying to monopolize or anything else. They just wanted to get paid for their work.

Aviator Glenn Curtiss stood at the center of their most highly publicized courtroom battle. The Wright brothers insisted his aircraft bore similarities to their patented design. After a years-long process—and after Wilbur’s death—a court ruled in the Wrights’ favor in 1914. Ironically, 15 years after that decision, the companies founded by the rival inventors merged to become the Curtiss-Wright company. Today, it is still a major player in the aerospace sector.

SONG: BEATNIK BY THE CHAMPS

And we’ll close out today’s History Book with an opening: The opening of the iconic Ninth Street Show, an avante-garde art exhibit in midcentury New York City.

That show debuted May 21, 1951, and featured heavyweights of the art world, like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Their wives—Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning—also had pieces on display, as did Franz Kline and nearly 70 other artists. The exhibit marked the public introduction of abstract expressionism, a style known for its emotional intensity without a sense of realism.

The bold, nontraditional style lacked a mass-market appeal. Still, collectors and critics alike took notice. The buzz it generated marked a shift from Paris as the center of the art world to the New York School.

Even today, many look at the frantic splashes and splatters of an enormous Pollock painting, or the hazy color blocking of a Mark Rothko, and remark, “I could do that.” But moments in art history like the Ninth Street Show bring to mind a response: “Yes, but did you? And were you the first?”

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: vaccine incentives. We’ll tell you about some of the ways state leaders are trying to encourage people to get the COVID shot.

And conflict in the promised land. We’ll dig into what’s driving the latest clashes between Israel and Hamas.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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