The World and Everything in It: May 29, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hi! We’re the Schock family, and I’m Michael. I’m Maddie, and our 3 and half month old baby girl is Winnie. I hope you enjoy today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! A pharmacy chain is sued for how it sought reimbursement, blaming government for ambiguous regulations.

PHILLIPS: There is nothing from the federal government that tells you what the right answer is. And there are lots of different states that take lots of different positions.

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

Also today the Monday Moneybeat, the AI goldrush, and a hat-tip to the Speaker of the House on his political savvy. Also, questions from our student journalists.

And, the WORLD History Book. Today, a somber memorial ceremony from 1958.

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER: I now present medals of honor to these two unknowns, who gave their lives for the United States of America.

REICHARD: It’s Memorial Day, May 29th, 2023. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Debt limit » President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are putting the finishing touches on a deal struck over the weekend to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.

KEVIN MCCARTHY: It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted but in divided government that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.

Biden told reporters at the White House that he’s confident the plan will make it to his desk and that no sticking points remained.

The compromise reduces overspending. But Washington will continue spending more than it takes in, adding to the national debt. That has sparked criticism of the deal from many conservative lawmakers.

But Florida GOP Congressman Greg Steube said Sunday:

GREG STEUBE: There’s a lot of good stuff in there. It limits topline federal spending by 1% on annual growth for the next six years. It pulls the COVID funds back that haven’t been used. It also puts a pay-go requirement in for the White House.

McCarthy said the House will vote Wendesday to raise the debt ceiling.  

Ukraine » Russia hit Ukraine’s capital city with a massive drone attack on Sunday as Kyiv prepared to mark the anniversary of its founding.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: [SPEAKING UKRAINIAN]

In a video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "Today, our country has suffered one of the biggest Russian attacks, 54 drones at one time.”

He added that air defenses shot down almost all of them, but some did find their mark.

A 41-year-old man was killed when debris fell on a seven-story building, sparking a fire.

Target » More controversy swirling around retail giant Target over the company's LGBT activism. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Amid a growing consumer boycott, Target’s yearslong track record of backing LGBT groups is coming into focus.

Target currently partners with a K-through-12 education group known as GLSEN. That group is pushing local school districts to keep parents in the dark if their children choose to identify as the opposite gender at school. It also seeks to inject LGBT gender ideology and sexually explicit books in schools.

Target responded to criticism by saying GLSEN—in its words, “leads the movement in creating affirming spaces for LGBTQIA+ students. We are proud of 10+ years of collaboration with GLSEN and continue to support their mission.”

Target lost an estimated $9 billion dollars of market value in just one week’s time amid a consumer boycott over its LGBT “PRIDE” collection in stores, which included items aimed at children.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Dodgers boycott » Meantime, in California, the LA Dodgers are in hot water with many of their fans.

A Catholic group is calling for a boycott of the Dodgers after the team re-invited an LGBT group known as “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” to a pride event at Dodgers Stadium.

The group has a history of staging drag queen displays that insult Catholics and Christians generally.

Brian Burch is President of a group called Catholicvote.

BRIAN BURCH: You wouldn’t do this to Jewish people or to Muslim people. Why Christians? Why have Christians have been singled out in this way, and why are we celebrating a group whose very purpose is to mock Catholic sisters?

The Dodgers disinvited the group but then apologized and reversed course.

Erdogan claims victory in Turkey » Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan celebrated in the streets after Erdogan declared victory over the weekend in a runoff election.

RECEP ERDOGAN: [SPEAKING TURKISH]

Erdogan thanked voters for electing him to another five-year term. He edged out his challenger by roughly 4 percentage points.

Critics say Erdogan has taken the government in a more authoritarian direction. His opponent campaigned on a promise to reverse that trend.

Texas Senate/Paxton impeachment » The Texas State Senate is set to try state Attorney General Ken Paxton after the Republican-dominated Texas House impeached him on Saturday on 20 articles of misconduct.

House Republican David Spiller:

DAVID SPILLER: No one person should be above the law, least not the top law enforcement official of the state of Texas.

The Republican attorney general faces accusations of bribery and other potential criminal conduct. He is currently suspended from his post. An impeachment vote in the Senate would result in his final removal.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: discounted drugs and the False Claims Act. Plus, Finding Nemo turns twenty. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, May 29th. We’re glad you’ve joined us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Invigorating! So excited for that next generation of Christian journalists, and I’m glad you and so much of our team could be there investing in them.

And here’s hoping that during this week we can find a new generation of first time donors to help carry on the work.

EICHER: Because there is so much work to do, so we’d best get to it. It’s time now for Legal Docket.

The Supreme Court has five weeks left in this term, with more than thirty opinions due before the end of it. That includes the college admissions dispute at Harvard and the challenge to President Biden’s plan to cancel student loans, not to mention a major First Amendment case involving a custom wedding website designer. It’s another of the many controversies that has grown out of the court’s same-sex marriage ruling back in 2015, now eight years ago.

Last week, the court handed down three opinions, all of them unanimous opinions

REICHARD: First, the case of the 94-year-old woman who lost her condo over a property tax dispute. That may be fresh in your memory. That was argued in April and we covered it three weeks ago.

Quick refresher on the facts: Geraldine Tyler fell behind on her property taxes and penalties by $15,000. Hennepin County, Minnesota seized her condo, sold it for $40,000, and kept the $25,000 difference.

Well, she won her case. The court held that the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the provision known as the Takings Clause, does not permit the state to appropriate more than what it’s owed.

You can hear the eventual outcome in this from Chief Justice John Roberts during oral argument:

JUSTICE ROBERTS: What's the point of the Takings Clause? I mean, that was something that was pretty important to the framers. The Constitution seemed to have a different idea in mind.

EICHER: If you’re a history buff, you might enjoy reading the unanimous opinion that Roberts wrote. It highlights history going back to the Magna Carta in the year 12-15. That’s where our Takings Clause has origins. We’ll link to the opinion in today’s transcript.

Now for the second opinion in a case captioned Dupree v Younger.

We gave you a deep dive just last week, so quick release. Again a refresher:

Here, a jury found a prison official liable for assault of an inmate. Bit of a technical issue here involving an official named Neil Dupree and a procedural rule about preserving arguments for appeal. So what Dupree was looking for was the ability to claim on appeal an issue the lower court had already denied.

Dupree wins again unanimously, the court saying he needn’t raise an issue after trial that he raised before trial. Case remanded.

REICHARD: This last opinion today is a win for a married couple who’ve been battling the Environmental Protection Agency for 15 years. And specifically, big setback for the enormous power of the administrative state. Exclamation point on it, too, because this decision was unanimous.

In this one: Michael and Chantell Sackett bought less than an acre of land in Idaho about 300 feet from a lake. They started to prepare the lot to build their house. But the EPA told them to stop, deeming the property as containing wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act. The agency threatened fines up to $40,000 per day.

All nine justices agreed the federal agency was wrong to claim oversight of the property. The court cut back on the meaning of the phrase in the law “waters of the United States.”

During oral argument, the attorney for the EPA and Justice Neil Gorsuch tangled this way:

FLETCHER: I am sympathetic to the idea of “how does a landowner know under the standard whether their land is covered?”

JUSTICE GORSUCH: So, if the federal government doesn't know, how is a person subject to criminal time in federal prison supposed to know?

EICHER: Now, we said it was unanimous in the judgment. Here’s where it breaks down a little bit. The justices split 5-4 on how to interpret the Clean Water Act going forward. Several justices expressed their concern over other wetlands now beyond the scope of EPA authority by this decision.

That case is remanded for further proceedings back down the legal system, so we’ve not heard the end of it.

REICHARD: Now for our oral argument today from April.

Maybe you’ve used price-match coupons to save money at your favorite stores? In this dispute, a grocery chain that operates thousands of stores with 800 in-house pharmacies used a price-match program to compete with other pharmacies. It discounted some prescription drugs to match competitors’ prices.

The chain is SuperValu. The program was perfectly legal, but reporting rules got the company into some trouble. Between 2006 and 2012, SuperValu reported non-discounted prices for reimbursement to government healthcare programs like Medicaid.

EICHER: Two pharmacists decided to sue SuperValu under the F-C-A, the False Claims Act. They did this on behalf of the federal government coming to the court as “relators.” A relator is someone who files a lawsuit on behalf of the government in exchange for a portion of any recovery.

The False Claims Act requires a company to know it is doing wrong, defined as “actual knowledge” of wrongdoing. In legal parlance, that’s called having scienter.

For its part, SuperValu argued that the term “price” wasn’t defined by regulation. So it defended itself saying that its action was objectively reasonable.

SuperValu lawyer, Carter Phillips:

CARTER PHILLIPS: In this case, I think you have to go back to 2005, when all -- when "usual and customary" had been in place for many years, Walmart adopts a pricing mechanism where it discounts deeply and across the board for all generics, and the question is, what do the rest of the pharmaceutical business do in that context? And it does it, against the backdrop that there is no usual and customary guidance. There is nothing from the federal government that tells you what the right answer is. And there are lots of different states that take lots of different positions. There's lots in the record in this case that says that the interpretation adopted by my clients was absolutely correct, those discounts didn't count.

REICHARD: On the other side arguing for the pharmacists, lawyer Tejinder Singh:

TEJINDER SINGH: The False Claims Act establishes three independent ways to prove scienter for a defendant who presented legally false claims. First, if the defendant correctly interpreted the law and then chose to break it, that's actual knowledge.

Going on to say deliberate ignorance or recklessness are the other ways to prove scienter—this knowledge of wrongdoing.

SINGH: On the other hand, if the defendant attempted to discern and follow the correct interpretation of the law and was transparent with the government about how it resolved ambiguities, there's no scienter. This rule is not easy for plaintiffs, but it is a fair rule that follows the plain meaning of the text, tracks more than a century of the common law of fraud, and achieves the fundamental purpose of scienter, which is to accurately separate culpable mind sets from innocent ones.

He argued we ought not incentivize companies the wrong way:

SINGH: Across the board, Respondents would replace existing incentives for companies to determine and then follow the law with an incentive to plunder every ambiguity for all it's worth. That flies in the face of the statute's text, the common law, and common sense.

Congress passed the FCA back in 18-63 to address rampant fraud during the Civil War. Unscrupulous vendors sold sick horses or rotten food to the Union Army. So this law gave people an incentive to call out wrongdoing. Today, it’s used more broadly, applied to entitlement programs like Medicaid.

The Department of Justice reports that in 2022 it recovered more than $1.7 billion dollars in false claims just from the healthcare industry.

Justice Clarence Thomas started off the questions noting different states required different ways of reporting. Listen to this exchange with Singh, lawyer for the pharmacists suing SuperValu:

JUSTICE THOMAS: You said that they took money they shouldn't take. So, in order to determine that, we have to know what they should have taken and they have to know what they should have taken.

SINGH: Yes. So the definition adopted by the lower courts was it's the -- so the definition in the regulations is the cash price charged to the general public. And so – so, also, I guess I should back up. You know, I took your question to be premised on a hypothetical world in which there was no guidance.

THOMAS: Yes.

SINGH: In this world, there was guidance. There --

THOMAS: Well, isn't the argument, though, about how much guidance you need in order for there to be -- a deviation to be false?

Lawyer Phillips for SuperValu got his share of questions, too, such as this exchange with Justice Gorsuch:

JUSTICE GORSUCH: I mean, I can easily imagine a case, Mr. Phillips, in which there's all kinds of internal communications, not among lawyers but among businesspeople, saying, we know this isn't our usual and customary price under any reasonable definition, but we're going to do it anyway, okay? And for reasons that turn out later with subsequent guidance, it might be objectively reasonable, if mistaken, but they knew. And that would be fraud in a normal circumstance. And I don't know why it wouldn't be here.

PHILLIPS: Because that's not this case. I don't have any problem --

GORSUCH: Oh, I --

PHILLIPS: I don't, frankly, have any problem with that case. But the case we --

GORSUCH: So -- so -- so you think --

PHILLIPS: In that because it goes to the frame, how you frame the issue.

GORSUCH: No, I think -- I think acknowledging that -- that you have no problem with that suggests the Seventh Circuit erred in suggesting otherwise.

EICHER: The federal government also argued in support of the pharmacists against SuperValu. Its argument is that even if a lot of interpretations of a law are possible, or even if the government didn’t give good enough guidance, SuperValu is still liable.

REICHARD: Business news outlets hope that’s not the case, as it could turn every concerning claim into a false claim. And that’s costly and time consuming to defend.

It’s so fraught trying to figure out where the justices are by the questions they ask, but I’ll try anyway: I do think the eventual opinion will take subjective understanding of SuperValu’s actions into consideration.

We’ll find out soon enough whether I’m right on that.

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: It’s time to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. He’s head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group and he’s here now.

David, good morning!

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

EICHER: Well, David, the news economy, I think, functions as all economies do, allocating scarce resources which have alternative uses, and with so much of the news resource allocated to coverage of the debt-ceiling negotiations. Perhaps it squeezed out other important stories. David, if we’re paying too much attention to that, what are we missing?

BAHNSEN: What interests me this week in the markets is this artificial intelligence stuff, and the huge performance of a company called Nvidia (which is about to be the next trillion-dollar company in the American stock market) getting more coverage in a sense than the debt ceiling did by the second half of the week. I think you’re going to end up with similar companies making a lot of money going way higher. We saw this with Nvidia: It’s up well over 100% in recent months.

But then I think we’re gonna have really bad companies that don’t make any money also go up a lot as part of the what will probably be next craze in this artificial intelligence space. So both as a social story and a market story, the AI thing is front and center. But you’re right. News—both in terms of the attention spans of those consuming as well as the people reading the news—has changed quite a bit.

The new conversation now is, “is the Fed going to pause or skip over the idea?” A lot of people have been expecting that they’re just pausing for while—letting it sit there—but maybe all they’re doing is just taking a meeting off and going back to resuming the hikes later. The Fed fund’s futures are still overwhelmingly pricing in close to 100% chance of a rate cut by the end of the year. But the idea of that happening in July or September was considered to have really high odds the past couple of weeks that have come way down since, so we shall see.

EICHER: All right. Well, David, it's interesting, you should bring up the Fed because the first of the two questions we have selected for today from our world journalism Institute students, the first one has to do with the Fed. And I should point out here that we've got quite a diversity of colleges and universities represented here in the students. But the two questions that we picked out, as it turns out, are both from students from Hillsdale and perhaps that has something to do with the fact that Hillsdale has an excellent Economics program? I don't know. Let's go to our first question.

OLIVIA HIHCEK: My name is Olivia. Hijcek. I'm from Goshen, Indiana. I'm here this week at WJI. My question is, I've heard a lot of conservatives complain about the Fed and say that we should abolish it. Is the Fed an inherently bad thing? Or is it something that could be used for good?

BAHNSEN: Well, that’s a great question. And there is a lot of debate within conservatism on it. I don’t think that there’s been a lot of really thoughtful debate.

I think that when it comes to most of the people who advocate just abolishing the Fed (and sometimes even talking about what the damage they’ve done in a really conspiratorial or sinister way,) I don’t think that there’s a whole lot of homework and research that’s been done there. My own view is that virtually everything the Fed is doing right now is counterproductive, and the way in which we’ve turned to the Fed to ask them basically to run the economy and smooth out anything challenging that happens in the economy is also very wrong.

I think a lot of it was even codified into law in the late 1970s in something called the Humphrey Hawkins Act that directs the Fed to make sure that everyone has a job and that prices remain stable. And I don’t think that what we call the dual mandate is supposed to be the role of the Fed either. I do not believe that not having a central bank is a good idea. I think that the humble objective of a central bank, being lender of last resort in the late 19th and early 20th century, is to guard against times where a liquidity crisis can turn into a solvency crisis if you don’t have a central bank that can lend against good collateral.

And so I follow the one of the founders of The Economist magazine, Walter Bobcat wrote that the central bank should lend at high rates against good collateral as a lender of last resort, and that’s what I believe the role of the central bank should be. Having them set interest rate policy arbitrarily at their own conference room table without a particular rule or methodology around it is destabilizing. And I think inherently we have a boom bust cycle because of a Fed trying to do too much. But I do not think that’s the same thing as saying we don’t need central bank as a lender of last resort.

AIDEN JOHNSTON: I'm Aiden Johnston. I'm from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and I'm here at the World journalism Institute. Proverbs 1322 says, A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. But Jesus also commends a widow for giving away all she has, given the substantial amount of wealth Americans have today, how should Christians think about saving for future generations, as opposed to giving to others, especially in the middle of a turbulent economy?

BAHNSEN: There’s a couple of biblical principles there that are very, very important. And I don’t think they’re at all contradictory. But I think that it’s really important that we learn to hold them in the right tension.

The biblical precept behind Jesus commending the widow had to do with the heart of surrender, being able to give abundantly, generously, and that someone who gives a very small amount but is willing to give sacrificially is more blessed than someone who gives a large amount when it is not sacrificial. And throughout Scripture, hundreds of verses that one could read that speak to not idolizing wealth and hundreds of verses that one could read that speak to wealth as a very appropriate incentive. And so we are asked to either conclude that the Bible contradicts itself over and over again, or that these are two dual principles that we can hold at once. When you invite the subject of inheritance in, I think that you do get an inevitable conclusion that the Bible is speaking well of holding and transferring wealth, but also doing so in a particular way. Not just having so much wealth, that there’s stuff to leave when you go, but as a godly person, to their children. It’s multigenerational.

My belief is that so much of this problem for the church is rooted in a lack of understanding of economics; that we do, in fact, meet the needs of humanity in a market economy. That when we understand from Genesis that God made us to produce goods and services that meet the needs of humanity, that God asks us to grow the earth to cultivate the earth, to extract the potential out of His creation, that what we are doing is participating in wealth building exercises and other incentives that go along with that, on the way incentives created by God. And I think that we need to learn to appreciate these things, and then understand them in the context of a moral philosophy that is rooted in generosity; that’s rooted in sacrifice, virtue and character.

This entire subject is more or less the mission of my life. I do think that an inheritance is a very godly objective. I think that there are ways people do that that is really inappropriate. I do not believe in enabling our kids and grandkids to not have to work. I think we didn’t want to be very careful about how we go about leaving an inheritance. And yet at the same time appreciating incredibly clear biblical precepts against idolizing wealth.

EICHER: David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. His personal website is Bahnsen.com. His weekly Dividend Cafe is found at dividendcafe.com.

David, thanks, I hope you have a great week!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, May 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up: the WORLD History Book. A popular animated movie turns 20 years old this week. Plus, 10 years ago—an NSA employee leaks classified documents. But first, the remains of two unknown soldiers are laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: We begin today on May 30th, 1958, Memorial Day 65 years ago. Audio here from a British Newsreel: Unknown but Not Unsung.

NEWSREEL FOOTAGE: Escorted by 1,500 military men, and observed by 10’s of thousands of onlookers, two war-heroes move slowly to their grave. 

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier had been created more than three decades earlier in 1921. The memorial inscription reads:

Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.

This one man represented the many who died during World War I whose remains couldn’t be identified. Now, more than 36 years later, two more join him—one from each war since the memorial’s creation.

President Eisenhower confers the nation’s highest honor upon the two soldiers:

EISENHOWER: I now present medals of honor to these two unknowns, who gave their lives for the United States of America.

A fourth body is added in 1984—this time from the Vietnam conflict. Though later his remains are identified.

SOUND: [GUARDS OF TOMB]

For more than 80 years, the tomb of the unknown soldier has been guarded by members of the 3rd Army Infantry Regiment. The sentinels patrol the tomb 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—a reminder that while the soldiers may be unknown, they are not forgotten.

MUSIC: [FINDING NEMO THEME]

Next, 20 years ago this week, Pixar Animation Studios releases their fifth feature film: Finding Nemo. The film features an overprotective clownfish searching for his missing son—fishnapped by a dentist diver.

VIDEO CLIP: Daddy! Help me! I’m coming Nemo.

Finding Nemo hit theaters on May 30th, 2003. Critics praised the film for its visual effects, storyline, and memorable characters…like Dory, the blue tang with acute short-term memory loss:

VIDEO CLIP: When life gets you down. Know what you do? I don’t want to know what to do. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.

Finding Nemo continues in the long tradition of G-rated animated films that appeal to both younger and older audiences alike.

VIDEO CLIP: So, what’s a couple bites like you doing out so late, eh?

The film features the voices of many A-list actors including Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, and Geoffrey Rush.

VIDEO CLIP: Don’t make any sudden moves. Jump inside my mouth if you want to live.

Finding Nemo became the highest-grossing animated film at the time of its release—the second-highest-grossing film of 2003—earning a total of $871 million dollars.

VIDEO CLIP: Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

The film won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, becoming the first Pixar film to do so.

And finally, ten years ago a U.S. government employee flees to Hong Kong—seeking protection as he begins releasing thousands of classified documents to the public.

On June 5th, 2013, The Washington Post and The Guardian publish some of those documents revealing the existence of US government surveillance programs—including one that allows for direct access to Americans' Google and Yahoo accounts. A few days later, the leaker reveals his identity…

NEWSCAST|GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Breaking details on that whistleblower who leaked top-secret files by the government surveillance of Americans. Edward Snowden revealed his identity to the Guardian. He knows he’s a hunted man and right now he’s trying to find a country that will give him asylum from prosecution.

On June 6th, Snowden sits down for an interview.

INTERVIEWER: Why should people care about surveillance? 

SNOWDEN: Because even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded, and the the storage capability of the systems increases every year, consistently, by orders of magnitude, to where it's getting to the point, you don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody even by a wrong call.

A week later, United States federal prosecutors file a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property and two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.

Over the next year, the leaked documents reveal US government sanctioned spying—not just related to security, but businesses and industry as well. The government says the published files threaten many intelligence assets all around the world.

On January 17th, 2014: President Barack Obama calls for NSA reforms while attempting to assure Americans the government is not abusing its power.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations. I will say that our nation’s defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation’s secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy.

In the end, Snowden disclosed more than 9,000 classified documents. He applied for political asylum in 21 countries.

On September 26th of last year, President Vladimir Putin granted Snowden Russian citizenship.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Russia’s military is coming up short on battlefield wins in Ukraine. How is that affecting the balance of power in Moscow?

And, a milliner in Colonial Williamsburg pulls back the curtain on trade secrets.

That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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

The Apostle Paul wrote: Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Colossians 4, verses 5 and 6.

Go now in grace and peace.

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