The World and Everything in It: November 3, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Brazilians return a leftist politician to power. What’s it mean going forward?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also a closer look at the Senate race in Georgia.

Plus bringing an American tree back from extinction.

And commentator Cal Thomas with what we can learn from the Brazilian election.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, November 3rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Space Force ceremony » AUDIO: [Orchestra]

A military orchestra at a ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday as America’s newest military branch welcomed a new commander.

Gen. Chance Saltzman is now the leader of the United States Space Force.

SALTZMAN: A resilient, ready, and combat-capable Space Force is indispensable to deterrence today, tomorrow, and every day after that.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hinted at a new space race against a communist rival.

AUSTIN: The People’s Republic of China is the only competitor with the intent to reshape the international order, and increasingly, the power to do it.

And Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the objective of building and strengthening the Space Force is peace through strength.

MILLEY: It’s to make sure that we are the dominant power. We are the power that has the most capable space force in order to do a single thing, and that is to prevent great power war.

Saltzman is stepping up as Gen. Jay Raymond, the first leader of the nearly three-year-old service, is retiring.

Russia grain » Moscow says it’s not pulling out of a wartime grain shipping deal after all. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow reserves the right to withdraw from the deal at any time, but for now, Ukrainian grain and other commodities will continue to reach world markets.

Putin praised Turkey’s diplomatic efforts to get the deal back on track … As well as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s—quote—“neutrality in the conflict as a whole.”

The July wartime grain agreement brought down global food prices about 15% from their peak in March.

Russia claims Ukraine agreed not to use a Black Sea shipping lane for military purposes, but violated that agreement with a weekend attack.

U.N. officials say the lane is not a safe zone when no commercial ships are present.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

NoKo Russia shells » The White House says North Korea is secretly shipping artillery shells to Russia to use against Ukraine.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby …

KIRBY: Our information indicates that they’re trying to obscure the method of supply by funneling them through other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

He described the size of the shipments as significant, but nothing that is likely to turn the tide of the war.

NoKo missiles panic SoKo » Kirby also reacted to an incident involving North Korea, also known as the DPRK, that forced South Korea to scramble its fighter jets.

KIRBY: We of course condemn these missile launches and the DPRK’s reckless decision to fire a missile below the de facto maritime boundary with the Republic of Korea.

The North fired more than 20 missiles, at least one of them in the direction of a South Korean island. That forced residents to take cover in underground shelters.

The missile landed near the rivals’ tense sea border. South Korea quickly responded by launching its own missiles in the same border area.

The launches came hours after Pyongyang threatened a nuclear attack in response to joint U.S. and South Korean military drills. 

Fed meeting » Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says interest rates are going up once again. The Fed bumped up its benchmark rate Wednesday by three-quarters of a point for a fourth straight time.

It’s all part of an effort to curb high inflation. But Powell said at some point, the Fed will ease up on the rate hikes.

POWELL: That time is coming, and it may come as soon as the next meeting or the one after that. No decision has been made.

The Fed’s move raises its key short-term rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%. That is its highest level in 15 years.

Israel election update » Election officials in Israel are expected to finish counting ballots today with all signs pointing toward a big political comeback for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The count, including nearly a half-million absentee ballots, should be complete today. Officials had counted 90% of the ballots as of Wednesday. And it appeared a Netanyahu-led alliance will have at least the 61 votes needed in Parliament to form a government. But Netanyahu did not declare victory.

He is already Israel’s longest-serving prime minister ever with a total of 15 years in office, most recently from 2009 to 2021.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

CVS, Walgreens settlement » America’s two largest pharmacy chains have agreed in principle to pay a combined $10 billion to settle lawsuits over the nationwide opioid epidemic.

CVS and Walgreens would pay $5 billion each to end a years-long legal battle.

CVS President Karen Lynch says the pharmacy chain is working to fight opioid addiction.

LYNCH: I definitely would say that we’ve made significant investments over the years to combat the opioid crisis and continue to do so.

Governments claimed pharmacies filled prescriptions they should have flagged as inappropriate.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: Brazil’s new president is a familiar one.

Plus, conserving an American tree.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 3rd of November, 2022. This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. First up on The World and Everything in It: a leftward turn in Brazil.

The South American country elected a new president to replace outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro. He had positioned himself as a defender of traditional values and was sometimes called the Brazilian Donald Trump.

REICHARD: Meanwhile Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known universally as “Lula”—supports abortion, LGBT causes, and workers’ rights. Joining us now is Emma Freire, a senior writer for WORLD who once lived in Brazil and has covered Brazilian politics.

BROWN: Welcome, Emma.

EMMA FREIRE, REPORTER: Thanks for having me, Myrna.

BROWN: Emma, the Brazilian people elected a man named Lula to be their new president. But he’s been president before and he’s also been in prison. What is Lula’s story?

FREIRE: Lula served two terms as president from 2003 to 2010. And he's been one of the most prominent figures in Brazilian politics for decades now. He became famous nationally in the 1970s as a trade union leader and something of a Marxist firebrand. He ran unsuccessfully for president three times And finally won after he toned down his Marxist rhetoric and promised to respect private property. He had a very good presidency. His years coincided with a boom global commodity prices and that really bolstered the Brazilian economy and let him spend big on social welfare programs. He left office with an 80% approval rating. But after that the tables really turned. The Brazilian political scene was rocked by Operação Lava-Jato, Operation Carwash. That was a massive, massive corruption scandal. Many people went to jail for that, including Lula. He was convicted of taking bribes. So he served 18 months of a 12 year sentence. But then the Brazilian Supreme Court vacated his conviction on technical grounds. He was not exonerated, but the Supreme Court ruled his trial hadn't been fair. So that cleared the way for Lula to run again because the Brazilian Constitution only limits the president to two consecutive terms.

BROWN: Lula defeated incumbent President Bolsonaro. What kind of president was Bolsonaro?

FREIRE: So as we mentioned before, Bolsonaro is sometimes called the Brazilian Donald Trump. He's right wing. He's combative, can be pretty vulgar sometimes. In his past, he was a captain in the Brazilian Army, and after that he served in the Brazilian equivalent of the House of Representatives for a long time. He was actually a fairly obscure political figure, but he ran on an anti-corruption platform and voter anger over Operation Carwash is really what sent him to the presidency. He is pro-life and opposes gender ideology being taught in schools. Brazil's evangelical Christians are Bolsonaro’s voting base. He has successfully positioned himself as the defender of traditional values. His wife is an evangelical Christian and his interest in being pro-life and those types of values really dates to around the time that he married her. Bolsonaro attracted an enormous amount of criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was opposed to shutdowns, he was opposed to school closures. He did not take the COVID-19 vaccine himself because he said he had natural immunity after he contracted the virus.

BROWN: Was this election outcome expected?

FREIRE: It was expected to be close. Brazilian elections are overseen by an Electoral Court called the TSE, and the TSE got quite involved in the election prohibiting Bolsonaro from calling Lula a thief or calling him corrupt because the court said that that violated the constitutional presumption of innocence. So that was a strange situation because, for many people, Lula's corruption conviction—even though it was quashed—was the main reason they wanted to vote for Bolsonaro. This is what Tiago Albrecht, a theologian in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre told me about it.

TIAGO: It’s tough to us Christians to have a thief running our country. I don’t know what to say to my children that people have elected a thief, a chief of a pack.

BROWN: What will Lula’s third term look like?

FREIRE: That is anyone's guess. Nobody really has any idea because throughout the campaign, Lula refused to go into any specifics about his plans. His campaign centered around nostalgia for the good years, the first time he was president when he had all those social welfare programs. As I mentioned before, his first presidency coincided with a very favorable economic situation. But this time the situation is quite different because like many countries, Brazil is dealing with a post COVID-19 economic slump. There's inflation, public debt, so it's gonna be much harder for him and he's never proven how he will cope with a difficult economic situation. Also opposition parties control Congress, which will make it hard for him to act.

BROWN: Is Lula’s election part of a bigger trend in South America?

FREIRE: It seems to be yes. Five of Latin America's biggest economies now have left-wing governments. In the early 2000s, there was this thing called the pink tide where a lot of Latin American governments became left wing and then into the 2010s some of them shifted right. And now it seems like they're all shifting back left again. Some people have concerns that Lula may be returning to his Marxist roots in his old age. This is what Samuel Kultz, a graduate student in Sao Paulo told me about his fears.

SAMUEL: I have economical concerns because there are allies of the Workers Party right now governing Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Cuba, and that doesn’t give a very good sign to the economical policies that are going to be enacted in Brazil.

BROWN: Emma Friere, senior writer for WORLD, thanks for joining us.

FREIRE: Thanks for having me.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next: the battle for a pivotal U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.

Just a couple of weeks ago, polls seemed to give incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock a small— but solid— lead over GOP challenger, Herschel Walker.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: But four of the last five polls give Walker a slight lead. Now, polls can be wrong. But taken as a whole, they are accurate to measure trends. And the race has been trending toward Walker, but it remains very tight.

Here to talk about this race is Professor Peter Wielhouwer. He’s the Director of the Institute for Government and Politics at Western Michigan University and a graduate of the University of Georgia.

REICHARD: Professor, good morning!

PETER WIELHOUWER, GUEST: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Glad that you’re here. Well, we’ll get to the Senate race in a moment, but I first want to ask you about how politics has shifted in Georgia. For a long time, Georgia was reliably red. Then it seems to have turned purple. So what changed?

WIELHOUWER: Well, I think if we take the long view for Georgia politics, long before it was reliably red, it was reliably blue. And so we see a massive shift that took place in the last quarter of the 20th century. And I think that what's going on now is a combination of a natural pendulum of politics shifting from one side to the other. And as Georgia itself has changed, it's become more diverse in its economy and its population. So that has made it a little bit less predictable than it once was. And we're seeing that it's just more competitive now than it used to be.

REICHARD: Well let’s talk candidates now. We know that Herschel Walker comes with some baggage. Family problems in the past and his own son spoke out against him recently. Plenty of fodder for negative attack ads on him.

On the other side, Sen. Warnock also has some baggage. His ex-wife says he’s not the man that he presents himself to be and she’s made several accusations as well. Warnock is a reverend and a church leader.

In your view, how have those accusations against either man affected the race?

WIELHOUWER: Well, I think people looking at politics and politicians today aren’t as shocked about politicians having baggage as much as they maybe were in previous generations. We are much more aware now, due to a variety of different things, such as the way the press covers politicians, that these are human beings, right? And they have flaws and some of those flaws are quite deep.

I think the credibility question has really hurt Herschel Walker, not so much that, of course, I don't have any idea whether the accusations against him are true. But when we look at polling both from the New York Times and from the University of Georgia, it does seem like Herschel Walker's baggage and the accusations against him—even if they're unfounded—has hurt him a lot more. We see a softer support for him, a softer sense that he's trustworthy among Republicans even, and definitely Independents ,than we see among Raphael Warnock. So my sense is that the accusations have been much clearer and much more direct against Herschel Walker. And that even though he's an icon in Georgia, and certainly as a UGA grad, he's an icon for those of us who are Bulldogs, the challenge for him is that the accusations have seemed to undercut his support among Republicans. And it's not that Republicans have all of a sudden decided that Raphael Warnock is more trustworthy. It's just that we see a much higher percentage of Republicans who are not sure and don't know about whether Herschel Walker is trustworthy. And that's a bit of a red flag for his candidacy.

REICHARD: What would you say are the major factors that will decide this race then?

WIELHOUWER: Well, as you pointed out at the opening, this is a much tighter race now than it was a month ago. And in a very tight race like this, where both sides are pretty baked in, both sides are pretty polarized in terms of the candidates. It really will just hinge on voter turnout, plus voter turnout, plus voter turnout. It's just a very tight race. And we just it really just depends on which side does a better job in this last week of mobilization does a better job with regard to making sure that their supporters get up to the polls. And the big unknown in this process is how tight this is going to be because Georgia is a recall state. The candidate that wins has to get an absolute majority of the votes cast. So if neither one of these candidates gets a majority, we're right back to where we were in December 2020 when Raphael Warnock won in a runoff election again.

REICHARD: Let’s turn to the race for governor in Georgia now. The incumbent Republican, Brian Kemp, has a fairly commanding lead right now … almost 8 points in an average of recent polls. Do you think the big lead there has affected the Senate race?

WIELHOUWER: As I look at the dynamic here it seems to me to be mostly independent. The way that these candidacies, these four different candidates relate to each other and are in the public's mind is just really quite different. With the Kemp and [Abrams] race, both of these candidates, this is a rematch as you know. And so you have a rematch of the candidacies from four years ago. And both of those have a pretty well-baked in name recognition, and voters are not necessarily unsure about what to do. We see what happens with Brian Kemp is that he's got a big incumbency advantage. He's had the advantage of being in office for four years and being able to deliver to the people of Georgia. And that's a quite different strategic situation for communicating with voters than promises and critiques about that election and about what one would do. So the question about him being the incumbent with a record to run on and that it’s simply a rematch from four years ago, makes this a quite different kind of race than we see with Warnock versus Walker. When we're looking at Warnock, we see both that he had a very tight race both in terms of the general election in 2020, as well as in the runoff. So that means that you've got a runoff candidate versus a political newcomer with baggage. And this is just two quite different dynamics.

REICHARD: We’ve been talking with Professor Peter Wielhouwer at Western Michigan University. Professor, thanks so much!

WIELHOUWER: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: If you’re looking for a way to earn an extra $10,000, here’s an idea:

All you have to do is wrangle 28 massive Burmese Pythons from the Florida Everglades!

The young man who won is a Florida teenager. Mathew Concepcion won ten grand for his efforts from the Bergeron Everglades Foundation.

The snakes are an invasive species devastating Florida’s everglades. So the state offers prize money to people willing to remove them.

In all, one thousand competitors caught and then euthanized more than 200 snakes during a 10-day competition.

Another young man named removed the longest python that was over 11 feet long. He won $1,500.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 3rd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: conservation. Myrna, what comes to your mind when I say the word: “extinction”?

BROWN: The Dodo Bird, dinosaurs, or the black rhinoceros...

REICHARD: Well, extinction faces more than just the animal kingdom. Entire plant species can die out as well. The American Chestnut was one of the most common hardwood trees in the eastern United States before the early 1900s. But a fungus choked out billions of them and killed those trees.

BROWN: But, all is not lost. Scientists are working to rescue the American Chestnut and hope to bring the tree back to Eastern forests. WORLD’s Paul Butler has our story.

AUDIO: [MEADOWVIEW SOUNDS]

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: Vasiliy Lakoba looks every bit the forester—a full beard, slight tan, and strong, rough hands. He wears a dark blue ball cap that matches his untucked checkered shirt. He’s clearly at home in the woods.

LAKOBA: This is what a clean, disease-free American chestnut stem, you know, the bark looks like. And then you look just further down below, just a tiny little bit, and this is a canker from the blight.

Lakoba is research director for the American Chestnut Foundation laboratory farm in Meadowview, Virginia. The canker Lakoba’s pointing at is a visible sore on the tree. The lacerated bark looks almost like the tree is slowly exploding from the inside.

LAKOBA: Essentially, the limb is dying. And if you look further up the limb, all those leaves are dead…This is a pretty advanced stage of the disease. The limb is girdled.

Girdled—meaning completely encircled. The blight is choking everything in the tree at that point. When the branch dies, the leaves die, and that branch won’t flower or bear chestnuts. Then death works its way down the branch and trunk.

The blight is caused by a pathogenic fungus: cryphonectria parasitica. Before 1904, it was unknown in the United States.

LAKOBA: At the very early part of the 20th century, it came in on other plants that are able to host that…fungus.

The trouble started when the New York Zoological Garden imported a chestnut species from Japan: the fungus a stowaway on the trees.

LAKOBA: And after its discovery, it spread throughout the eastern United States and the Southern part of Canada very, very quickly, and within just a matter of years the American chestnut was decimated on this continent.

The American chestnut was in many ways the tree that built Colonial America.

LAKOBA: For human populations, it was a major timber species that fueled the construction of many cities throughout North America and also used for other types of goods.

Its straight grain, rot resistance and light weight made it an ideal building material. It was everywhere…from fence posts and flooring, to caskets and even eventually telegraph poles. It also provided crucial foraging for wildlife, livestock, and people.

LAKOBA: And for the wildlife of our continent, it was an enormously important food source, both in terms of the seeds and the leaves for smaller biota.

But within about 50 years time, the fungus spread from New York—up and down the eastern coast—from Maine to the Mississippi. The blight killed an estimated 4 billion Chestnut trees. Many dead trunks still stand tall in these forests.

AUDIO: [SOUND OF LAKOBA ENTERING LAB]

LAKOBA: This is a culture of the fungus that causes the chestnut blight.

In the lab, Lakoba holds a petri dish of the fungus. He and his fellow conservators at The American Chestnut Foundation are part of a long-term project to develop a blight-resistant American chestnut tree.

LAKOBA: We use this to give the disease to the trees so that we can test whether they're blight resistant or not.

For more than 30 years the foundation and its partners have been using traditional plant breeding techniques used with food crops to introduce blight resistance to the species.

LAKOBA: So these are 50% Chinese chestnut, 50% American chestnut.

The Chinese chestnut is naturally resistant to blight. After three generations of cross breeding, the Virginia test farm features two seed orchards with promising results.

Besides the breeding program, there is another approach: genetic engineering.

LAKOBA: We are working with our collaborators at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, with the transgenic chestnut project that they have developed.

The most effective introduced gene so far actually comes from wheat. The enzyme breaks down oxalic acid—the primary weapon the blight fungus uses against the chestnut trees.

AUDIO: [SOUND OF LAB]

Technicians at the laboratory farm test the new tree variety’s resistance to the blight fungus using young trees and saplings.

LAKOBA: Rather than waiting many years to see how they respond to the disease, what we do is we cut off the tops of the plants and place the fungus that causes the disease right on top.

Lakoba stands in front of two different specimens in one of their greenhouses.

LAKOBA: This stem in your right has only a little bit of symptoms right at the tip here, and so that indicate to us that this stem a good deal more blight resistance and might have better prospects for chestnut restoration.

Researchers are currently involved in a government mandated longitudinal safety study—to make sure the hybrids and genetically modified trees don’t create ecological or health effects of their own.

In the meantime, the original American chestnut hasn’t completely died out. Blight can’t kill the underground root system. So stump sprouts can regrow under certain conditions. But the new sprouts have a limited life-span as they will inevitably give-in to the blight as well—meaning the tree species is considered functionally extinct.

If the government approves the new American Chestnut trees, there’s still a lot of work to do.

LAKOBA: The huge range that it used to occupy in eastern North America, spanning from Mississippi to Maine and Ontario, is not something that we're going to be able to replant just with our own manual efforts.

Vasiliy Lakoba hopes to someday see his work reintroduce this American giant into our nation’s forests.

LAKOBA: It's going to start with a growing number of reintroduction populations that we plant and manage and allow them to reach maturity and hopefully reproduce. Because after a while, it's going to be important that those restoration populations are self-sustaining.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

* audio interview courtesy of AFP Forum

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Commentator Cal Thomas says Brazil’s new president can teach Americans an important lesson in politics, if we’ll pay attention.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Brazil held a presidential election last Sunday. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal reported the result: “Brazilians elected Luiz ‘Lula’ da Silva to the presidency again on Sunday, ousting incumbent Jair Bolsonaro by less than two percent of the vote. Latin America’s largest country is gambling again on left-wing populism that has failed so often in the past.”

Liberalism, even socialism extending in some countries to communism, continues to spread in South and Central America. Why?

I think it has something to do with intentions and feelings. It doesn’t matter whether an idea or program works, only that people feel good about themselves by advocating for them. In this failed philosophy, intentions matter more than outcomes.

Luiz da Silva vowed to help the poor. If he had the power and will to help the poor, presumably to elevate themselves out of poverty rather than sustain them in it, why didn’t he do so during his two previous presidencies, from 2003 to 2010? Did no one in the media, or his opponent, bother to ask him that question? And what about the voters? Why would they vote for someone who failed to perform in two previous terms?

North American liberals promise a better life for people who vote for them. Record spending on anti-poverty programs has failed to reverse poverty and yet people continue to vote for liberal Democrats, believing their empty promises. Instead, we get higher taxes, more debt and a social agenda that is tearing the country apart.

A few years ago, I wrote a book that tried to bridge the gap between left and right by asking legislators to center on programs that have succeeded and discard those that have failed.

This is the way businesses operate. If a sales plan isn’t working and one’s competition is doing better, you have two choices: double-down on failure, or change plans. Only in government do failed and costly programs go on forever. A government bureau, as Ronald Reagan once said, “...is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!”

With a predicted Republican majority in the House and possibly the Senate after next week’s midterm election, Republicans must focus on cutting spending by examining and keeping programs that work and repealing those that don’t live up to their legislative goals. Social Security and Medicare also must be reformed to preserve both programs. The left will devolve to its usual scare tactics that Republicans want to eliminate both. The GOP better have a credible answer this time.

What could be ahead for Brazil was also summarized by the Journal: “(da Silva) won with his appeals to the poor despite his conviction for corruption. Before his Workers’ Party (PT) ceded power in 2016, it orchestrated the largest corruption scheme in Latin American history, using the national development bank, the state-owned oil company, Congress and private contractors. The money machine was designed to entrench his party in power.”

Brazil and other Latin American countries are flirting with economic, social and political disaster by embracing left-wing populism. North Americans would do well to take note and vote accordingly and intelligently.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow on Culture Friday, John Stonestreet returns. We talk about affirmative action and more.

And, a review of the Netflix adaptation of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. It raises questions that only the gospel can answer.

Plus, Ask the Editor.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: Be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. (James 5:8-9 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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