The World and Everything in It: November 6, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Isabella Ridgway, and I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I work as a fitness instructor, helping people learn how to be good stewards of the body God's given them. I hope you enjoy today's program.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning! The first blockbuster cases of the term at the Supreme Court. Public officials blocking citizens on social media that appear to be government sites. 

AUDIO: Anybody who looks at that is going to think: This is an official website. It looks like an official website. It performs all the functions of an official website.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat. A new jobs report shows relative strength, but are there warning signs?

And the World History Book: 50 years ago this week, the War Powers Act.

AUDIO: Congress is opposed to any more Vietnam adventures and wants a voice in setting foreign policy.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, November 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

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

SOUND: [Israel defense system]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel » Israel’s Iron dome defense system heard there shooting down more incoming rockets …

SOUND: [Gaza explosions]

… as explosions continue to rock Gaza City.

SOUND: [Gaza sttrikes]

Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Local officials claimed scores of people died in the strikes.

Dr. Marwan Abusada is chief of surgery at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. He said his emergency room …

ABUSADA: It is well, overwhelmed with a huge number of people as you see here. It is a horrible situation.

AUDIO: [Daniel Hagari speaking]

Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said IDF troops have encircled Gaza City and are targeting terrorist infrastructure. Hamas militants embed their operations in residential areas.

Blinken on Israel » Meantime, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is on a mission in the Middle East trying to contain the regional fallout from the war.

Many Arab leaders are calling for a cease-fire. But Blinken is making the case that Israel must continue its mission to destroy Hamas.

BLINKEN: Senior Hamas officials said that it was their intent to do October 7th again, and again, and again.

October 7th was the date Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel from Gaza.

Blinken says the United States is working with Israel toward a more limited humanitarian pause …

BLINKEN: This is a process. Israel has raised important questions about how humanitarian pauses would work. We’ve got to answer those questions.

He’s meeting today with leaders in Turkey … after stops in several Middle Eastern countries … as well as a surprise meeting with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Congress funding for Israel, Ukraine » House Speaker Mike Johnson is pressing Senate Democrats to take up a bill that House Republicans passed last week to pay for billions of dollars in aid to Israel.

JOHNSON: That’s exactly what was requested, $14.5 billion dollars. What they don’t like is that in the House, we’re trying to be good stewards of the taxpayer’s resources.

The White House asked for that aid as a part of a much larger package that would also fund aid to Ukraine, among other things.

Johnson says the House will address those needs separately.

The GOP bill would also cut some newly expanded funding for the IRS to pay for the aid to Israel.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described it this way:

SCHUMER: This stunningly unserious proposal. Unserious at a time like this?!

He said his chamber is crafting its own legislation that will include aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine latest, Zelenskyy remarks » And a Ukrainian missile strike reportedly hit a shipyard on the annexed Crimean Peninsula, damaging at least one Russian ship.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC’s Meet the Press that Ukraine has fiercely defended the Black Sea region. And …

ZELENSKYY: That was a signal that we can manage this war, even against such terrorist organizations like [the] Kremlin.

Zelenskyy again made the case for continued aid from the West.

He said Ukrainian soldiers are fighting on the front lines against a Russian assault on Europe.

GOP politics » Several Republican White House hopefuls are gearing up for this week’s presidential debate, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who rallied supporters near Orlando over the weekend.

DESANTIS: We’ve blown winnable elections year after year over the last three election cycles. The brand of Republicans has become toxic — very difficult to attract people to the party. So Florida has shown the way forward for the Republican party.

DeSantis remains in second place in national GOP polls with 13 percent. Former governor and ambassador Nikki Haley is third with 8 percent.

But Donald Trump has continued to pull away from the pack. He now enjoys 60 percent support, nationally, among Republicans.

Five GOP candidates will face off in the third debate. Trump, once again, will skip the event.

NBC News will host the debate in Miami at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday.

DeWine on Ohio abortion measure » Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is speaking out against an upcoming ballot measure that could enshrine abortion rights in the states’ constitution.

The Republican told Fox News: Sunday …

DeWINE: It's a radical proposal and whether you're pro choice or pro life. It just goes much, much too far.

The amendment would allow all abortions at least up till the moment when a baby can live outside the womb.

It would also prevent the state from acting—quote—“directly or indirectly [to] burden, penalize or interfere with” abortion rights.

Pro-life groups say that could nullify state laws requiring parental consent for abortions performed on minors and eliminate safety standards for abortion facilities.

Ohioans will vote on the measure tomorrow.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: free speech and social media on Legal Docket. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday morning November 6th and a brand new work week for The World and Everything in It. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. It’s time now for Legal Docket.

AUDIO: And we have a big, breaking story today. Many of you probably heard that Port, little Port Huron, the city of Port Huron, is going to the Supreme Court.

EICHER: Audio from a TV show produced in Port Huron, Michigan. A town with a population less than 30-thousand generating a case that’s going to the Supreme Court.

ROUGH: And it stems from an action taken by the city manager of Port Huron a local official who got fed up with a persistent citizen activist posting negative comments on Facebook. The City Manager had heard enough, so he blocked the complaining citizen.

EICHER: But in so doing, did he violate the First Amendment? It’s a little surprising we’re only now testing the question at the Supreme Court, because as long as we’ve had social media, it seems, we’ve had political brawls. But now the issue is ripe, and it’s not just Michigan. There’s also a case from California, and they’ll both be considered.

Together they will answer the question: When can a public official block someone on social media?

ROUGH: Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in both cases. And WORLD Correspondent Jeff Palomino has our report.

JEFF PALOMINO, REPORTER: Let’s say you are a concerned citizen. You’ve become aware of something you think is a problem in your community. You want to make your opinion known, but how best to communicate with public officials? You turn to social media. You find your public official on Facebook or X, as Twitter is now known and express your views there.

But what happens if the government official you’re talking to doesn’t like what you say? What if he deletes your comments? What if he blocks you from their page?

This is exactly what happened to Kevin Lindke of Port Huron.

He claims that City Manager James Freed violated his right to say what he had to say about what was going on.But to prove he violated the First Amendment, the public official has to be shown to have engaged in state action.

Meaning Freed’s actions must be fairly attributable to the State. Not something he did in his personal capacity.

By the time this case got through the appellate stage … one federal appeals court—the Sixth—had created one test to define “state action.” But a different appeals court—the Ninth—had created a different one.

JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH: In both cases, we have a profusion of possible tests to choose among.

That’s Justice Neil Gorsuch. He and his colleagues on the Supreme Court have to choose which test will prevail.

Now, a quick review of the facts in both cases. The Sixth Circuit case is Lindke v. Freed. City Manager Freed used his Facebook page to talk about his passions and interests, including his daughter, his wife, his dog, his work, and his favorite Bible passages. But he also posted some administrative directives he issued as city manager. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, he shared policies issued for Port Huron. That’s the case we’ve been talking about.

The Ninth Circuit case is O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier. School board members created public Facebook and Twitter pages to promote their campaigns. After they won the election, they continued to use the platforms. They posted little of a personal nature. Instead, most of the information was about school-district business and news.

Christopher and Kimberly Garnier were parents in the district and they frequently left critical comments on these pages. So, the school board members blocked them.

At oral argument, attorney Allon Kedem argued for Lindke in the Port Huron case. He proposed the first test for state action.

That test I’ll call the “Channel of Communication” test. Here’s how he explained it.

ALLON KEDEM: Under our test for state action, a public official who creates a channel for communicating with constituents about in-office conduct and then blocks a user from that channel must abide by the Constitution. This test, which focuses on how the public official is using and purporting to use that account, is consistent with this Court's precedent under which a public official who purports to act in that capacity is a state actor.

The problem with this test is that most of the city manager’s posts were personal. Justice Alito wanted to know when a personal page transforms to a public one.

JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO: what if 95 percent of the posts are personal and 5 percent of the posts involve discussion of his work?

KEDEM: So it would obviously be a more difficult argument for us to make, but if there's only one place to go to interact with the city manager about directives that he himself had issued, that doesn't change the fact that if you get blocked off from that page, you're suddenly losing access to a lot of information.

But Justice Alito wasn’t sure about that line. How low did it go?

ALITO: but if it's like 1 percent, one-half of 1 percent, it's not? Is that what you're saying?

KEDEM: So it's not a quantitative test. It's qualitative.

Justice Gorsuch asked Kedem what if the citizen harassed the public official about the personal posts. What if he harrasses him about his cat pictures? Is that state action?

KEDEM: So I think it could be in the exact same way that it could be if, for instance, you were on an official page of the town and you were being harassing. At some point.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: No, no, all the harassing in my hypothetical has to do with cats.

KEDEM: No, I understand.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: The commenter hates cats.

KEDEM: Sure.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: --cats.

MR. KEDEM: Sure. And -

JUSTICE GORSUCH: And maybe he hates your children too, I don't know.

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE GORSUCH:  But --but if I block that person for that, at some point, you know, even though it's all my personal stuff, that's state action?

Kedem said it would be state action but gave reasons why a lawsuit like that might fail.

Lawyer Pamela Karlan proposed the second test for state action. She represented the parents in the California case, the ones who sued the school board members.

I’ll call her test the “doing their jobs” test. She explains it to Justice Alito.

ALITO: Your test is whether government officials are doing their jobs, right?

PAMALA KARLAN: That's the starting point, and it creates what I would say is a kind of rebuttable assumption that when a government official is doing her job, she is a state actor.

Justice Alito pressed with a hypothetical. A city mayor is in the grocery store where he’s repeatedly approached by constituents. He really doesn’t want to be bothered, but he listens to comments by supporters and people sympathetic to his policies.

ALITO: But when somebody who is a known opponent approaches the mayor, the mayor says, look, please call my office. Is the mayor doing his job when he's doing that?

KARLAN: When they're clearly off duty, that is, you know, pushing the shopping cart down the aisle, arguably, they're not doing their job. But, when they create an ongoing site like the site here, they maintain a forum, if you will...

For Karlan, people are also doing their jobs when they do things the job legally requires. As evidence, she cited various laws, including the California school district’s own by-laws, that said receiving feedback from constituents was an important part of school board members’ duties. She explains, this is what these board members did on Facebook and Twitter.

KARLAN: And here what you have is both of the Petitioners using "we" and "our" when they talked about what the Board is doing and anybody who looks at that is going to think: This is an official website. It looks like an official website. It performs all the functions of an official website.

Those are the tests proposed by the people who were blocked. But what about the government officials who did the blocking? The officials in both cases agreed on their tests.

This third test I’ll call the “duty and authority” test. To see if an official engaged in state action the Court must look at those two things. Here’s Hashim Mooppan for the school board members.

HASHIM MOOPPAN: if there is neither the exercise of duty nor authority, that's not state action...Now that raises the further question of: Well, how do you know whether there are duties and authorities? At that point, we're not talking about a test. We're talking about how to implement the test. And I think the things that the Court should be looking at are objective indicia that are capable of disentangling the two capacities.

Objective indicia, like use of government resources to maintain the page, whether a person's boss could tell him what to do on the page, or whether the official was exercising exclusive duties. Sounds easy, but the Court spent a lot of time trying to define both terms.

Here’s Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT: I think it's very difficult when you have an official who can in some sense define his own authority. So I think, for a governor or, you know, President Trump, it's a harder call than someone like a police officer, who's a subordinate. Or I could --you know, my law clerk could just start posting things and say this is the official business of the Barrett chambers, right? (laughter.) And --and that wouldn't be okay. But if, you know, the --that wouldn't be okay. (laughter.)

Defining “duty” was also a problem. Should it be broadly or narrowly defined? Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained her position.

JUSTICE SONYA SOTOMAYOR: Every elected official tells me that they're on duty 24 hours a day. And so, if they are during that 24 hours creating, themselves, and posting the Facebook and doing all of the communications they're doing, why isn't that state action?

The U.S. Solicitor General filed friend of the court briefs and argued on behalf of the city officials in both cases.

She agreed “duty and authority” was the correct test, but added one element. In close cases, the Court should look to the nature of the property involved. Only if it’s government property would there be state action.

Justice Elena Kagan expressed doubt about that. Social media has changed the way we communicate. And continues to.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: And part of that change is that more and more of our government operates on social media. More and more of our democracy operates on social media. And I worry that the rules that you're suggesting is really not taking into account the big picture of how much is going to be happening in this forum and how much citizens will be foreclosed from participating in our democracy if the kind of rule you're advocating goes into effect.

And therein lies the tension.

One one side, a broad test that finds almost anything to be state action risks trampling the rights of millions of government employees. It would also risk waves of litigation and an outcome that instantly makes most speech subject to government control.

On the other side, social media is one of the most powerful mechanisms for private citizens to say what they need to say, as the musician John Mayer might put it.

So, a test that’s too narrow risks cutting people off from their government.

In these cases, I predict the court will - to use the words of Justice Gorsuch from oral argument - “coalesce” around the “duty and authority” test with debate among the Justices over how wide that test is.

The eventual ruling will likely mean the California school board members engaged in state action but leave room for no state action by City Manager Freed. After all, even public servants need to say what they need to say, too.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnsen group. And he is here now. David, good morning. 

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

EICHER: All right. Well, new jobs report out 150,000 jobs added in the month that just went by the previous months that were a lot higher have been revised down. Headline unemployment rate 3.9%. Very close to four. Do you see any warning signs?

BAHNSEN: Well, it was the softest unemployment report we've had in a couple of years. That's a far cry from it being a disaster, but you didn't have net job losses. But still, the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.9. The biggest issue to me by far is 200,000 people leaving the labor participation force. The labor participation force is the key metric: the amount of people in the society that have a job or are looking for a job – that want a job. That's the key metric. That number is still quite weak. Bothers me on a number of levels, both economically and culturally. 

The unemployment number at 3.9, the 150 when 180 were expected, they all speak to some weakening, but they all still are in the context of a pretty good labor market. It came in a week where the JOLTS data showed the number of job openings that are unfilled ticked up 100,000 when it was supposed to tick down 300,000. So you still supposedly have 9.6 million unfilled jobs, all the while you have about half of that, that are looking for a job and not finding one. So it's a confusing metric in the labor market.

EICHER: Now, how do you factor that you had a major strike going on? That number was baked into the unemployment report. So now that the strike has settled, those jobs come back, does that soften it at all?

BAHNSEN: No, I don't believe that there's clarity as to how the BLS actually processes striking workers. And you're still talking about 10 to 20,000, not 100 to 200,000. So it's still a pretty small number. The primary movers were not in auto workers, so I'm skeptical that that was a big needle mover in this month's data. Whether or not you had a strike over the last month, it's always a good idea to have that three months of data roll. Because if it isn't a strike, it could be something else, Data is inherently lumpy. And three month rolling data tends to smooth out a lot of lumpiness.

EICHER: So speaking of the strike, what do you make of the settlement? Seemed like a really big win for the UAW and the loss for the carmakers?

BAHNSEN: Oh, I think that there were wins and losses for both parties. I mean, they wanted a 40% raise, and they got a 25% raise. So if anything, they were offered 20 to avoid a strike, they settled at 25. It didn't move a whole lot off of what the auto makers originally offered. But I think that public sentiment did more go with the auto workers than the automakers, which I would not have expected. And I think it speaks to the utter shock of both the leading Democrat and leading Republican candidate for president taking the auto workers side.

EICHER: Okay, let's talk about what the Fed did on Wednesday, last week, holding rates steady, which was highly expected. So we're still sitting at 5.25 to 5.5%, the target rate. But maybe this was the interesting quote from Jerome Powell, the Fed Chair saying that the full effects of our tightening have yet to be felt. What do you say about the Fed action last week?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I don't think any of this has anything to do with inflation at all. And I don't think it has had anything to do with inflation for a long time. The inflation number continues to go lower. And if anyone were looking at the actual number, not the lag effect to shelter, they would see they're already at the Fed target. So it has to go to the Fed trying to keep it as long as they can to take out some of the excesses, particularly around things like housing, and try to time their exit with the so-called soft landing where they get out before any real damage is done. And I'm very skeptical that they're going to do that. I'm very, I'm skeptical that it's already happened. I think in other words, they're already past the point of damage being done. But you are correct that he has more or less said not only are they not raising rates this year. They're not raising rates next year, either. They're done raising rates. 

Futures have pretty much now priced in virtually 100% chance of that being the case that they're done raising, and all of the debate has shifted to when they will begin cutting. And so he had a chance in this press conference to finally talk a little bit hawkishly, even in the face of pausing interest rates for the last three meetings, and he didn't do it. He acknowledged all the things that I've been talking about to WORLD listeners for months and months: that the financial conditions are much tighter than the Fed funds rate. That they, in other words, have financial markets doing some of the tightening for them, high bond yields, high mortgage rates, etc. And he acknowledged that the market indicators of shelter price inflation are somewhere around 0%. And that the CPI has it somewhere between seven and 8%. So they know that there's an artificially high number in the three to 4% inflation reading they're getting, that if it were really normalized would be indicating about 2% inflation. And that's with core goods being basically a deflation, certainly at severe disinflation. 

So I think that they're done. And I think the question now will move to quantitative tightening, how long they can get away with that, because the long bond yield had been a problem. Now, look, it came down almost 50 basis points this week. That's why stocks were up 1200 points in one week. This was the biggest week for the stock market all year. And that was directly related to bond yields coming down. If the long bond, the 10 year, can get closer to 4%, maybe the Fed can keep doing quantitative tightening. But I don't know that it can. And I think as it gets, when it was around 5%, it was indicating to me that the Fed was going to have to accommodate even moreso. So we're going into an election year. It's going to be very interesting to watch the Fed, Nick.

EICHER: Now we've been talking about the headline generating data points, jobs, and the Fed meeting on interest rates. Is there anything that you're seeing in your data that we're not seeing in the big papers?

BAHNSEN: Well, the manufacturing numbers have contracted 12 months in a row. And so while the GDP number, as we talked about last week, came in much better than expected, the unemployment number worsened a little this month, but it's still not all that bad. Bond yields for the better part of this year had been pricing in the reality that we weren't going into a recession when they had previously been pricing in that we were going to have a recession. So you have a lot of mixed data about where the economy is going to go. 

Meanwhile, I think Nick, what I'd be looking to for a metric of the real economy, there's so many things we could talk about. We talked about housing. We've talked about the stock market, and we've talked about jobs and wages. But when it comes to things, or whatever people like to use the term the “real economy.” Even the real economy is not monolithic. There's multiple categories. There's no houses trading. There's no houses getting built. There's no houses being bought or sold. And prices have not come down much. But that's because everything's sort of frozen in place. So there's a lot about the “real economy” that I don't know how to measure or look at until we get on the other side of this Fed tightening, and get a chance to kind of see price discovery. Where do bond yields go? What are growth expectations going to be? This is not a time to be taking overly confident positions in the economy getting really bad, or overconfident positions in the economy getting really good. It's a very nuanced and complicated time. And I know that doesn't always go well in a news cycle. It doesn't always go well in a headline. And it doesn't really go well in human nature – our desire to have a simple bottom line explanation. But I want to be very honest with people right now. We have a very complicated set of realities in the economy. And I expect that to stay for months to come.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen group. You can keep up with David at his personal website that is bahnsen.com. His weekly dividend cafe you can find at dividend cafe.com. David, It's always great to talk, and we will catch you next time. Thanks so much.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, November 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book. This week, Microsoft joins future tech giants in the up and coming world of personal computers. Plus, fifty years ago, Congress limits the war powers of the president. But first, a Scottish missionary brings the gospel to faraway islands.

Here’s WORLD Radio intern, Emma Perley.

EMMA PERLEY, INTERN: In the book of Acts, Christ teaches that Christians are a light for the Gentiles, bringing salvation to the ends of the earth. And one of Scotland’s most effective missionaries, John Paton, took this charge to heart.

IAN HAMILTON: He went every Sabbath day to hear the Word of God, that there were places untouched, not just by civilization, as we would call it, but untouched by the glorious gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Pastor Ian Hamilton reflecting on Paton’s life at a 2022 conference. John Paton was born in 1824 in a small Scottish village. At 12 years old, he attends a local school and learns his father’s trade. While studying the Bible, he finds a verse that inspires his life’s work.

HAMILTON: The words of Psalm 74 Verse 20, indelibly, were etched into his mind and heart. “The dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.”

Paton is later ordained and marries a young woman named Mary. They immediately begin a four month journey to New Hebrides in the South Pacific Ocean. On November 5th, 1858, the Patons land on the island of Tanna, now called Vanuatu. Friends warn them of the danger.

HAMILTON: An older minister said to Paton, ‘You'll be eaten by cannibals.’ And Paton responded, “Mr. Dixon, you're advanced in years, you will soon die, you'll be eaten by worms. And it doesn't really matter to me whether the worms get me or the cannibals.”

Far from being eaten by the cannibals, Paton wins many to the faith and plants a Reformed Presbyterian church on Aniwa island. He translates the New Testament into the Aniwa language and establishes an orphanage. Paton dies at age 83 in Australia, but his legacy lives on. Today, Christianity is the predominant religion in Vanuatu, and one third of the population are Presbyterian.

HAMILTON: He did not think he was an extraordinary Christian. He only did what God had called him to do, and what God calls every Christian to do: to take up their cross and follow Christ.

Next, 50 years ago this week, President Richard Nixon vetos a plan to limit the President’s ability to declare war. Audio here from NBC:

AUDIO: Congress is opposed to any more Vietnam adventures and wants a voice in setting foreign policy.

U.S. troops have been in Vietnam for 19 years…without an official declaration of war. And Congress has had enough. Representatives draft the War Powers Resolution, reinforcing Congress’s constitutional authority to declare war.

AUDIO: This lays down in policy, for the first time very clearly, that the president cannot by himself take this country to war and should not.

The resolution seeks to restrict the presidential office from engaging in unsanctioned conflict with other countries. But President Nixon opposes it. Audio once again from NBC:

AUDIO: Nixon, the president in question, vetoed the resolution, claiming it was dangerous and unconstitutional.

But Congress overrides his veto, and passes the War Powers Act. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan have criticized the act since then, saying it unconstitutionally restricts presidential powers. Here’s Ford during an American Enterprise Institute forum in 1983.

FORD: I firmly believe as a practical matter, that the War Powers resolution, with all its requirements, handicaps a president.

Congress invoked the War Powers Act most recently in 2020, in order to limit President Donald Trump’s ability to approve airstrikes in Iran. Here’s then Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer in audio from CBS News:

SCHUMER: A bipartisan majority of senators don’t want the president waging war without congressional approval.

And finally, on November 10th, 1985, a new computer technology competitor emerges. Here’s Microsoft founder Bill Gates:

BILL GATES: And now, the retail package of Microsoft Windows. Thank you ladies and gentlemen! It’s here!

Users previously had to type out commands in code through a slow and clunky command-line interface. But Microsoft Windows 1 uses a graphical user interface, or GUI. Users interact through icons on the screen and can pull up more information with different windows and applications at once.

GATES: This really is a great product. We’ve put our hearts and souls into it.

Windows 1.0 is hot on the heels of the wildly successful Apple computer. But the company fumbles with its first two versions and can’t compete with Apple’s superior interface. Here’s Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1983:

STEVE JOBS: Apple II has become the world’s most popular computer, and Apple has grown to a 300 million dollar company, becoming the fastest growing corporation in American business history.

But in 1990, Microsoft has a breakthrough with Windows 3. Its intuitive ease of use makes it a serious competitor to Apple and the IBM personal computer. Audio here from CNBC:

AUDIO: Bill Gates, his vision was to put a PC on every desk, in every home. We’ve struck a chord with Windows, where people feel like it’s their product, it’s their system.

Microsoft goes on to become a hugely successful company, joining the ranks of Apple and IBM. And about 1.4 billion people use Windows operating systems around the globe today.

That’s this week’s WORLD history book. I’m Emma Perley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The Israel-Hamas war raises tensions on college and university campuses here in the U.S. We’ll have a report on what life is like for Jewish students at Columbia University.

And, Classic Book of the Month for November, a book about forgiveness. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

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, “Praise the Lord, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his steadfast love toward us. And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!” –Psalm 117.

Go now in grace and peace

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