The World and Everything in It - May 31, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

New Jersey wants to veto a proposed pipeline. But the energy companies set to build it appeal to the Supreme Court.

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

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat: a conversation today about the new federal budget—President Biden has proposed a record-setting $6 trillion package.

Plus, the WORLD History Book. Today we mark the 170th publication anniversary of a story that changed the culture.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, May 31st. 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: Time for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR:  House GOP calls for congressional investigation into virus origins » Republicans in the House want Congress to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

GOP leaders have penned a letter demanding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allow a probe into the matter.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said Sunday...

SCALISE: I mean, look at some of the scientists in China who were getting ill early off from the Wuhan lab, and yet they won’t have an investigation on it. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but I think a lot of this noise is starting to break through where Speaker Pelosi is feeling the heat.

Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey agrees that there is growing momentum for a congressional probe.

GOTTHEIMER: I think my colleagues and I all agree that we need to get to the bottom of this and find out the origins of the virus, and that means investigating it.

Meantime, the Biden administration and Britain are turning up pressure on the World Health Organization to take a deeper look into the origins of COVID-19.

An initial report from a WHO investigative team said it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus escaped the Wuhan lab. But the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva has issued a statement saying the first phase of the study was “insufficient and inconclusive” and called for a more thorough investigation. The British ambassador in Geneva, Simon Manley, seconded that.

President Biden last week called on intelligence agencies to step up investigations into the origin of the virus and report back in 90 days. Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre…

PIERRE: We have to get a better sense of the origin of COVID-19, and also, how do we prevent the next pandemic?

CNN recently reported that the Biden administration earlier this year halted a probe started under President Trump into whether the virus originated in a Chinese lab.

Netanyahu opponents move close to power-sharing deal » In Israel, opponents of Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday appeared to be closer to a coalition deal that could end his 12-year run as prime minister.

Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yamina party, announced Sunday that he will join a coalition to topple Netanyahu.

Bennett, a former Netanyahu aide turned rival, could be forming a power-sharing agreement with opposition chief Yair Lapid. That deal could see the two leaders rotating the job of prime minister over the next four years.

Israel has held four elections over the past two years with each ending in deadlock.

At least 20 people shot outside banquet hall in S. Florida » Two people are dead and at least 20 others were wounded after a shooting outside of a banquet hall in South Florida.

Miami Dade police director Freddy Ramirez said the gunfire erupted early Sunday morning after a concert inside the building.

RAMIREZ: When the concert was wrapping up, there were individuals that were standing outside when this vehicle pulled up, exited and began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd.

Authorities believe the shooting was targeted, not random. No word yet on a motive.

Police did not immediately announce any arrests and asked the public for any information that may lead them to the suspects.

Universal Studios, Seaworld in Orlando go maskless » Universal Studios and Seaworld in Orlando are no longer requiring guests to wear face coverings.

Both parks had recently stopped requiring masks outdoors, but still required them indoors and while riding rides. As of now, that is still the case at Disney World.

Universal and Seaworld said the move was in response to newly announced CDC guidance. Both parks say they are asking people who are unvaccinated to continue wearing masks, however, they are not asking guests to provide proof of vaccination.

A Quiet Place II marks the return of summer blockbusters » And theme parks aren’t the only place looking a little bit closer to normal. Movie theaters were busy over the weekend.

TRAILER: Please, there are people out there worth saving…

The thriller A Quiet Place II will haul in an estimated $57 million in ticket sales over the holiday weekend. That pre-pandemic-sized haul marks the return of summer blockbusters.

The R-rated action flick Nobody finished second with $26 million for the weekend.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a pipeline dispute at the Supreme Court.

Plus, the origins of Memorial Day.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, May 31st. This is The World and Everything in It and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Did you say “May 31st”?

Mary, you know what that means!

…and so does our fellow co-host Myrna Brown, who recorded a little gift…

BROWN: Happy birthday to ya! Happy birthday to ya! Happy birthday, happy birthday … Happy birthday to ya!

Happy birthday, Mary! That’s better than a cupcake!

REICHARD: Calorie-free, beautiful alto voice of Myrna, my sister from another mister. Thank you. Thank you!

EICHER: Before we get started today—just in case you missed it last week—I did want to repeat thanks for all the first-time gifts that came in this month, you responded in such a wonderfully generous way and used up all the triple match that several families had contributed to encourage new financial supporters.

REICHARD: And it all came in early—almost a week before the end of the month.

Definitely gives us momentum that I think is going to help, going into our June Giving Drive. We’ll get that started next week.

EICHER: Interesting, too. We’d heard from a few regular givers wondering whether their June giving might be eligible for a match and we said, you know, that’s up to other donors as we said on the air.

So while a group of us were up at Dordt University for WJI, our fundraising team back in Asheville let me know they’d received a visit from a WORLD family who were traveling in Western North Carolina and they dropped in and took a tour of the offices and our studios.

Then our development team sent me something I want to share with you. Let me read some of the note they sent: “We thoroughly enjoyed the visit and seeing all the faces of the WNG family. Yesterday, Nick and Mary told the podcast listeners that you are looking for some folks to make matching challenges for your June Giving Drive. In honor of our 37th wedding anniversary this June, we would like to offer $37,000 towards a giving match pool.” They had only one request and that was that it was to be an anonymous gift…

REICHARD: Isn’t that something? And happy anniversary by the way! What an encouragement! So we’ll just let this week go by and whoever else wants to pour into that pool that this family got started—we’ll add it all up and by the time we kick off the June giving drive a week from now—we will fill in all the details.

So if you’d like to help fill up the pool, so to speak, for matching gifts, just let us know.

EICHER: And to keep that simple, you can email me at nick@wng.org, just so it’s easy to remember. nick@wng.org and I’ll pass it along to our fundraising team if you’d like to make the matching pool a little deeper.

REICHARD: It’s time for Legal Docket.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down three opinions last week, all these unanimous.

First, the court made it more difficult to challenge deportation orders.

You’ll probably remember this one from last week, Mary told you about the case of a man from Mexico deported after a conviction for DUI—driving under the influence. She also reported the Supreme Court had some time after his deportation ruled in a separate case that DUI ought not to be considered a deportable offense for those the law defines as “illegal aliens.”

Later on, the deported man again entered the country illegally. But doing that is even more legally serious. Re-entry carries a higher penalty than initial illegal entry. Nevertheless, he argued that because today a DUI wouldn’t get him deported, his re-entry ought not carry an enhanced punishment.

So he sought to challenge the underlying orders, as we reported.

But last week, the justices—all nine—said no. In the view of the court, the man failed to follow clear procedure to challenge his first deportation, so that’s on him.

REICHARD: Second decision: A win for the island of Guam against the federal government. This dispute is over a dump site in Guam that the US Navy created in the 1940s. Guam sued to recoup some of the costs of cleaning up the site. The narrow question was whether such litigation is allowed. The answer is yes and the case remands to lower court to sort out the details.

EICHER: Third decision is a win for online travel companies like Orbitz and Hotels.com.

Several cities in Texas brought a class action against them seeking certain back taxes. But the cities lost on that matter, and the appeals court assessed certain costs against the cities.

At issue here is one of those costs, a payment made in high-stakes litigation to secure an eventual judgment. That $2.3 million payment is what the cities asked the district court to change, either to reduce it or deny it altogether.

But the high court ruled district courts have no authority to alter costs awarded by appellate courts. So, the cities will have to pay that amount after losing the underlying case.

REICHARD: Okay, now on to oral arguments, two of them today.

This first argument pits states’ rights against the need for more fuel pipelines.

It came about a week before the Colonial pipeline shut down on May 7th that crippled fuel supply on the east coast. That’ll no doubt add urgency to the eventual decision in this case.

Here are the facts. PennEast Pipeline Company is a consortium of five energy companies. It wants to install a pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, about 120 miles’ worth of pipe.

PennEast needs to acquire land along the route, and that’s the point of conflict here, as New Jersey objects.

Paul Clement argued for PennEast, saying Congress never meant for states to have veto authority like this. And he sounded an alarm:

CLEMENT: If we lose this case, then, you know, this pipeline will not be built, at least in anything like its current configuration, and depending on exactly how we lose this case, I think this federal interstate pipeline, until the law is changed, will be at the mercy of New Jersey, because I don't think there is a way to reroute this pipeline in a way that doesn't implicate a state interest in land.

Clement emphasized that PennEast is really just stepping into the shoes of the federal government here, which has powers of eminent domain.

Justice Elena Kagan seemed to question his premise:

KAGAN: And that raises questions in my mind as to what the government’s involvement in this case was. In other words, was there any supervision by the government? Was there any participation by the government? Did any lawyers for the United States approve the timing of the condemnation action?

Clement answered yes, via the federal agency known as FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Once it approved the route of the pipeline, commissioners took objections from property owners and made modifications to the route.

CLEMENT: That was all done under the auspices of the federal government. They approved the route and the certificate right down to which parcels were affected. Now, once that happens, the way it has worked for 70 years, is that the certificate holder then gets to go into federal court.

...go to federal court to sort out disputes over eminent domain. At that point, the proceeding is against the land itself, not the state. Pipeline companies only pursue eminent domain actions after FERC has done its work.

In essence, Clement argued that FERC delegated its authority to seize land by eminent domain.

On the other side, New Jersey’s lawyer Jeremy Feigenbaum. He argued that the law governing all this, the Natural Gas Act, says nothing about the federal government delegating its power of eminent domain to a private company. And private companies don’t have power to overcome the sovereignty of a state that objects to land condemnation by eminent domain.

Justice Samuel Alito wondered what if instead of PennEast being a party to this dispute, it was FERC, the government agency? Listen to this exchange with New Jersey’s Feigenbaum:

FEIGENBAUM: It's still a lawsuit directly filed against the state by a private party, which we think is exactly what the framers thought would be an offense to the fundamental dignity of sovereigns who can't be hailed into court without their consent.

ALITO: Is New Jersey's dignity really, in any kind of practical terms, compromised to a greater degree based on the caption of the lawsuit?

FEIGENBAUM: We think yes because, if it were otherwise, then all manner of this Court's cases would have to come out, I think, differently...The fact is the offense to a state's dignity is the private party lawsuit, and that's 
the through line of all of this Court's cases is sovereign immunity.


Several justices worried about giving states too much power to block pipelines. But New Jersey calls that an overblown worry. After all, electric transmission and oil companies don’t have eminent domain power. They have to negotiate with the state. So why should natural gas pipelines be any different?

The federal government sides with PennEast in this case. It’s lawyer, deputy solicitor general Edwin Kneedler, argued that if a private party is doing work in the public interest, then eminent domain power extends to it.

I detected no strong leaning either way. However the court decides, implications exist for private landowners and fuel users alike.

Okay, final argument today.

This is a dispute over an esoteric bit of patent law, but it’s important, because it helps the free market work for the general public—protecting intellectual property and thus driving innovation that benefits us all.

Here’s the background. One company, Minerva Surgical, applied for a patent on a device that treats a gynecological problem. It then assigned its rights to the patent to Hologic, a competitor.

Assigning a patent right implies that the thing is able to be patented.

Once the patent registration came through, Hologic said Minerva infringed the patent. Then Minerva claimed the patent isn’t even valid. Minerva developed and wants to sell its own device to treat the gynecological ailment. It says the products are sufficiently different to allow for it, and that the patent paperwork wasn’t adequate to justify a patent.

The two sides are fighting over a doctrine called “assignor estoppel.” The assignor here is the entity assigning the patent. So the assignor can’t put a stop to—that’s where the word “estoppel” comes in—the assignor doesn’t get to challenge the validity of the patent it assigned to someone else, the assignee. Again, assignor estoppel.

Minerva says it’s high time to dump that doctrine. It wants to challenge the validity and has all sorts of reasons why. Its lawyer, Robert Hochman, cites the law as in his favor:

HOCHMAN: The Patent Act doesn’t provide for assignor estoppel and never has. In fact, it says invalidity will be a defense in any action.

Hochman injecting some alliterative creativity later on:

HOCHMAN: This is exactly the kind of Doctrinal dinosaur...that you abandon, that you give up on...

On the other side, Hologic’s lawyer Matthew Wolf. He invoked another doctrine, stare decisis. That says the decision stands—in other words, it looks to court precedent to decide—and when looked at in that way, his client wins. After all, the doctrine of assignor estoppel’s been around a hundred years!

But Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out it’s not as locked up as all that.

ROBERTS: Mr. Wolf, you began by talking about stare decisis and cited some authority for it, but you have to weigh against that, don’t you, the Court’s description of assignor estoppel as a failure and the court’s statement that to whatever extent that doctrine may be deemed to have survived … it’s not controlling. So, it’s not the strongest stare decisis argument

WOLF: So while there has been critical language, when the Court explicitly refuses to overturn a case, there’s no conclusion other than it remains good law.

Perhaps Justice Stephen Breyer summed up the court’s true task in this case:

BREYER: I can understand abolishing it. I can understand keeping it. But limiting it, I’m finding trouble in finding the right way to do that.

The “right way” to limit the doctrine. That’s the task.

People who want to keep the doctrine of assignor estoppel say it’s a good thing, because it settles things once and for all. That reduces uncertainty in the law.

But others say if inventors can never challenge patents that are much broader than what he or she meant to assign in the first place, well, that’s unfair and could wind up choking off innovation.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen joins us now. It’s time for our weekly conversation and commentary on business, finance, and economics. David. Good morning.

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

EICHER: Alright, the number is $6 trillion a record new federal budget of $6 trillion proposed. Let’s talk about economic policy, David.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I'm a little different than some of my conservative friends on this stuff. Because the math of it is not anything we didn't know, right there. They're coming through and putting together a budget because they have to by law.

But all of the things that are in there are things that already been proposed, and were part of the campaign. And so I think at the end of the day, the notion that we are in a period where politicians feel that the people want them spending exorbitant amounts of money in a combination of things, mostly transfer payments, but that there isn't necessarily a clearly defined point at which there's resistance, clearly defined point at which the taxpayers say "no," that, you know, the sort of Tea Party moment in 2010, 2009 doesn't really exist anymore. I think that's that's pretty well known.

I think that'd be true if it were a Republican president as well.

So I don't I don't feel that there's a huge economic implication to a budget being proposed of that level of dollars. We're already spending that level of dollars, we're spending that and then some, depending on which bills passed and which ones don't.

So right now, the notion of there not being a limit to the fiscal side of economic management is well baked in.

EICHER: So I’m taking your point that this budget proposal is no surprise. But still, looking at this Wall Street Journal story on the budget and we’ll be talking about deficits and debts so before I do, just a quick definition of terms: deficit is the one-year difference between what we spend and the tax revenue that flows in and a single year’s deficit piles into the overall debt we carry. And so debt is the total and deficits are the year-to-year increase of it.

So now looking at this: The White House is projecting a deficit for fiscal 2022 just under $2 trillion. Compared to the overall economy, that’s about 8 percent of GDP, what America produces in a single year. Compared to last year, it’s a decrease from an almost $4 trillion deficit with all the emergency spending. Those are the deficits.

The debt now: and here I’m quoting, under the budget plan, “Debt held by the public would rise to [almost 112 percent of GDP] in 2022, surpassing the level seen in the wake of World War II. Debt would continue to rise in the following years, reaching 117 percent of GDP in [the year] 2031.”

That’s a pretty heavy load.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, the conversation, I agree is somewhat important, regardless of the details.

What's really important about you said, by the way, that'd be the smallest deficit next year that we've had in the last few years. The point is, next year, they're projecting that deficit post COVID, without COVID Bill Three, COVID Bill Two, COVID Bill One, and infrastructure bill, etcetera.

Just in a normal pro-forma of the United States P&L, they are projecting with no wars going on, and in substantial economic recovery, deficits of well over a trillion dollars. And that's after we had a run in about a two year period $5 or $6 trillion combined deficit on top of the national debt, we entered COVID with a $21 trillion. Do the details matter a whole lot beyond that? I don't, I don't think they do.

I think that the point is, there's no austerity, that's gonna fix it. You're not going to hire you know, McKinsey or Deloitte and Touche to come in and advise on how you can cut some costs. There's no Medicare or Social Security reform coming there or being proposed or being discussed in even the most remote of ways.

The last Republican president we had, ran against the idea of entitlement-spending reform. So the vast majority of what affects the national budget is transfer payments, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, more recent times, the various COVID relief measures. And there is absolutely no appetite whatsoever.

So in a sense, I'm all for talking about it. But I just think we have to be very honest on what's going on.

Sometimes you got to talk about it, because there's this battle taking place—like there's some that want to spend more, and there's some that want to not spend more, there's no such battle. There's no conversation to join in taking sides, there is no side here. And what is happening is that the people have demanded this level of spending and the people are getting it.

And my view is that such debt represents a continued deceleration of growth of the American economy, which continues to exacerbate inequality, socially, and otherwise cultural inequality. For the very kind of obvious reason: that rich, successful people are incredibly resourceful at navigating their way through such times. And most people lack the resources to do such navigation. And that's what I expect to happen for years and years to come.

EICHER: And so people hear this—increasing the government debt—and at the same time seeing stories of rising prices, we’re hearing talk of inflation in the economy, you’re hearing the same things I’m hearing.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I am of the opinion, this is not what a lot of my conservative friends want to hear right now. Because I think there's a lot of people that do like the inflation narrative. They like pinning price increases on the really poorly thought through third COVID, stimulus bill, on Biden administration policy, all of that. And I'm really critical of those policies in that bill myself. But I'm really more and more in the camp, that these inflationary price signals are going to prove to be highly cyclical. I think that the deflationary pressures that are coming on the other side of this are going to be quite, quite significant.

And so this is not ever to be taken as me having a positive outlook about this. It is very concerning. It's just simply the disagreement as to whether or not excessive government indebtedness in developed nations is primarily inflationary or deflationary.

But it comes down to this, Nick: I believe that excessive debt pulls growth from the future into the present, which therefore means you get less growth in the future, that less growth means less loan demand. And less loan demand is by definition, a tautology, deflationary. And so when a dollar is spent in the economy, even a printed dollar that becomes inflationary when it gets spent quickly, and over and over again. But when it gets spent once and then sidelined and put into a savings account and sits in a bank, it gets sort of exterminated or removed from circulation. That's not inflationary.

And the correlation in history, the better way to say this is the inverse correlation, that velocity goes down in direct proportion to debt going up, is about as perfect an economic law as anything I've studied.

So I just simply don't believe that excessive government debt is inflationary in a developed country. In a banana republic it is. It's a failure of government policy. It's the byproduct of a subsidy. When you subsidize something, you raise the prices of it. And those are the inflation stories we should be talking about. Those are economic, those impact people's lives, those are permanent. The other inflation stories, I think a lot of people are going after them for clickbait, for a political jab in a moment. And it's not very thoughtful in my opinion. So that's my little hobbyhorse about all this stuff.

EICHER: Alright thanks, David Bahnsen. Financial analyst and adviser. He writes at DividendCafe.com—easy email signup if you’d like that in your inbox. David, talk next week!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, May 31st. Good morning! You’re listening to World Radio and we’re so glad you are! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up on The World and Everything In It: The WORLD History Book. Today, memorials: the origins of Memorial Day, a fictional slave who spawned a sea change, and remembering a Christian martyr. Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

SOUND: CROWD GATHERS AT JOAN OF ARC’S EXECUTION, FROM JOAN OF ARC, 1999.

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Five-hundred and ninety years have passed since the English burned Joan of Arc at the stake. The French heroine claimed to have seen saints, who told her the Lord wanted Joan to help France defeat the English. She said she had her first vision at age 13. She was just 19 years old when she died on a pyre in Rouen, France, on May 30, 1431.

Historian Rachel Gibbons told the BBC her death is key to her legacy.

GIBBONS: If she had been found not guilty of heresy... it’s very unlikely we would ever have heard of her dying. Making a sacrifice of herself for what she believed is what brought Joan of Arc to prominence.

She convinced Charles VII, heir to the French throne, and his military commanders that she had divinely inspired knowledge. She did have an exceptional military mind for an uneducated farm girl, leading France to notable victories against the English.

But, she didn’t win every skirmish. The Duke of Burgundy’s men captured her and handed her over to the English. They imprisoned her for over a year on charges of heresy, witchcraft, and violating divine law for dressing like a man. The heresy charge centered on her claim to have heard directly from God.

After wavering a bit, Joan refused to recant and insisted on wearing men’s clothing. Knowing a fiery death awaited her, Joan asked a priest to hold a crucifix high for her to see atop the pyre.

Two and a half decades after her death, Pope Callixtus III declared the charges against Joan of Arc without merit. He made her a martyr and a saint. France now counts her among its nine patron saints.

MUSIC: SENTIMENTAL BANJO, PERFORMED BY ROB MCKILLOP

Moving from sainthood to slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowe was just nine days shy of her 40th birthday when the first installment of her anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, began its 10-month run in an abolitionist newspaper. The National Era published what would become the hottest work of fiction of that century on June 5th, 1851.

R. Blakeslee Gilpin is a history professor at Tulane University. He told PBS the book marked a cultural turning point, a decade before the Civil War.

GILPIN: It’s the most popular book in American history and the most influential book. There’s no competition for that title. It’s going to convert millions of Americans—not to being for immediate abolitionism, not to being for racial equality—but for being against slavery. That’s a huge thing…

Prior to writing her famous novel, Stowe lived in Cincinnati, a border city between free Ohio and Kentucky, a slave state. The white woman’s firsthand experiences, seeing the dichotomy between slave and free, made her increasingly outspoken against slavery. Stowe began to write what she expected would be just a few short sketches for the abolitionist newspaper—giving the slave’s perspective. Gamaliel Bailey in Washington, D.C., edited the serial. It ran for 40 weeks, and picked up steam—and readers—along the way.

The story of the gentle and virtuous slave Tom evoked compassion from readers. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a history professor at Norfolk State University, told CBN News the serial made people see an ongoing injustice in a new light.

NEWBY-ALEXANDER: It made us see ourselves—it was our emotional mirror. And it prompted some individuals to rethink how they thought of slavery.

After publishers packaged the installments into a novel, printing presses ran 24 hours a day to keep up with demand. It became the best-selling novel of the 19th century, and the second-best-selling book. The Bible took the top spot.

And finally, some of you are likely enjoying a three-day weekend.

SOUND: LAWNMOWER AND SWIMMING POOL

You have the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to thank for that. The U.S. Congress passed that law in 1968, saying the country would observe Washington’s birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Columbus Day on Mondays.

The United States had celebrated Memorial Day on May 30 every year. But, on May 31, 1971—50 years ago—the United States made a point to observe Memorial Day on the last Monday in May for the first time.

Memorial Day marks a time of reflection, honoring and mourning the members of the United States Armed Forces who have died while performing their military duties. We at WORLD offer our heartfelt gratitude to the fallen—and to those who are missing them today.

MUSIC: TAPS

REAGAN: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Very appropriate way to end on this Memorial Day. Speaking of which, you’ll want to listen tomorrow for the story of a Gold Star mom one of our WJI students met. Lillian Hamman will bring us that story.

Also tomorrow: universal pre-K. We’ll tell you why not everyone is excited about plans to expand taxpayer funded education.

And, Christian counseling. We’ll tell you about a therapist suing over restrictions on what he can and can’t tell his clients.

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.

Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Go now in grace and peace.

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