The World and Everything in It: October 2, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm Don Filcek. I'm the lead pastor of Recash Church in Mattawan, Michigan. And I'm Linda, and I'm his wife. We hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The U.S. Supreme Court opens its new term today and there are some blockbuster cases on the docket. We’ll have a preview.

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

Also today the Monday Moneybeat: we’ll talk about regular order and continuing resolutions. Those are the issues that brought us to the brink of government shutdown.

And the WORLD History Book. 80 years ago this week, a risky plan to rescue Jews in Denmark.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, October 2nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Government funding » Congress has hit the snooze button on a government shutdown. That’s how Democratic Sen. John Fetterman described a stopgap funding bill that lawmakers passed Saturday night. The vote barely beat the buzzer on a midnight deadline.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer:

SCHUMER: Thank you to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their excellent work. The bipartisanship here in the Senate set the tone, and I hope it sets the tone for the future.

The top Republican in the chamber, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said a shutdown would not only halt progress on top conservative priorities, but …

MCCONNELL: It would actually set them back. And in the process, it would saddle the people we represent with unnecessary hardships.

But some Republicans insist they can’t keep rubber stamping massive overspending.

The funding package will pay the government’s bills through November 17th.

Ukraine aid » What the bill will not do is pay for U.S. aid to Ukraine. President Biden wants Congress to act quickly.

BIDEN: They said they were going to support Ukraine in a separate vote. We cannot, under any circumstance, allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.

Many House conservatives, though say it’s becoming harder to accept Washington writing huge checks for Ukraine while the U.S. southern border remains largely unprotected. And Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CBS’ Face the Nation …

MCCARTHY: I support being able to make sure Ukraine has the weapons that they need, but I firmly support the border first. So we’ve got to find a way that we can do this together.

The speaker, though, stopped short of saying he would block any Ukraine aid bill that does not include funds for the border.

GOP polling » White House hopeful Nikki Haley is among the Republicans who say Washington has a huge spending problem.

HALEY: The reality is, Republicans and Democrats, all of them have been spending taxpayer dollars in a ridiculous way. They just take a budget from last year, add more to it and keep going.

An average of recent polls suggest Haley would perform better head-to-head against President Biden in the general election than either the front-running Donald Trump or second-place Ron DeSantis.

Three polls give Haley a 4-point lead. She’s the only Republican leading Biden outside the margin of error in a hypothetical matchup.

DeSantis said Sunday that Trump’s refusal to take part in debates will catch up to him.

DESANTIS: You’ve gotta show up. You’ve got to earn people’s votes. And if you’re not willing to do that, voters will take notice as we get closer to these contests.

But it hasn’t happened yet. Donald Trump still holds a massive lead among GOP primary voters.

FEINSTEIN » The remains of Senator Dianne Feinstein are back in California.

A military transport plane flew her flag-draped casket from Washington, D.C., back to her home state over the weekend.

Tributes continue to pour in from former colleagues. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham:

GRAHAM: It's okay to be tough and kind. It's okay to be liberal or conservative, but it's even more okay to work for America and that's what she did. We've lost a lot with Diane. 

That from CBS’s Face the Nation.

Feinstein died Friday of natural causes at age 90 after more than 30 years in the Senate.

New York flood aftermath » New Yorkers are cleaning up in the Big Apple after relentless rain swamped city streets, flooded basement apartments, and shut down a terminal at LaGuardia Airport.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says her state needs federal aid.

HOCHUL: We need help to help build up our resiliency, help the business owners that had to shut down, help reimburse localities for the overtime in the extra resources they had to expend with emergency teams on the ground.

The storm dumped a record of almost 9 inches of rain on parts of the city on Friday.

Turkey bombing » An explosion shook the city streets in Turkey’s capital Ankara on Sunday when suicide bombers triggered a device in front of government buildings. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

AUDIO: [Speaking Turkish] 

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Turkey’s interior minister says two bombers attacked the Interior Ministry building. One died in the blast. Police shot and killed the other.

Two police officers suffered injuries.

A Kurdish militant Marxist group known as the PKK has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Turkish government says its military has responded by destroying more than a dozen PKK targets.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: A preview of upcoming cases at the Supreme Court. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday morning, October 2nd and you’re listening to The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket. And today’s that special day: the first Monday in October!

CURLEY: [Gavel] Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court.

EICHER: The 2023—2024 term of the U.S. Supreme Court!

REICHARD: Yes, indeed! And we offer the same bargain as we do every first Monday in October: you commit to these 10-minutes-or-so every Monday from now to the end of the term in June. You do that and you will have heard something about some good takeaway from every single argument the justices hear.

EICHER: That’s right. Build your knowledge of civics and maybe even win the next trivia contest. Just 10 minutes, sounds too good to be true, but it is true! We’ve delivered year after year on it, and we’re gearing up to deliver once again.

Arguments start today, we’ll bring analysis next week. Meantime, start us off with a preview of things to come.

REICHARD: Yes, but do note that the entire schedule is not fully set yet. Right now it’s about halfway done:

The justices have accepted 34 cases for review so far; typically the number is in the sixties on the low end, eighties on the high end.

So today’s preview just hits a few of what could be blockbusters.

I also think it’s useful to understand how the Supreme Court accepts cases for review in the first place.

And who better to explain that than our old friend Justice Stephen Breyer?

It’s only been a year since he retired, and I’m just verklempt.

He retired last year after 28 years on the bench. Here’s a clip of an interview he did at Tufts University back in 2018. After all the trials and all the appeals are over with, he says, there’s only one place left to go.

BREYER: And that's us. Alright, now you get a rough idea of the numbers. If I tell you out of all those millions of cases, there may be 80 to 100,000, which have a federal question. That's Congress, or the Constitution. And 8000 of those, or about 10%, will ask us, please hear our case. We don't have to, you see, we don't have to. Out of those 8000 we’ll probably grant around 80. So you're talking about maybe 60, 70, 80 cases out of 8000 who ask us. So it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, narrow question.

Now you also see I have two jobs. First, is you have to decide. You have to decide what to decide. Four votes, takes a case. Four out of nine. And then you have to decide what you decided to decide. Now if you understand me, then you're already on your way to law school. [laughter]

EICHER: So now you know! Well, let’s bring in legal reporter Jenny Rough and we’ll quickly run through some of the big cases to watch. Hi, Jenny!

JENNY ROUGH: Hi, Nick and Mary. Let’s start with disputes over American citizens, their government, and social media.

The question is whether Americans can sue government officials who block them on social media.

Two circuits came to two different conclusions: One said you can sue politicians who block you, the other said you can’t.

Now, when circuits split like that, that gets the attention of the Supreme Court. It is a major reason the high court takes a case to resolve that split. So here we are.

The two cases are similar, so I’ll just talk about one set of facts. Beginning with the case Lindke v Freed. Here, a city manager faced an unhappy constituent who posted a stream of negative comments on the city manager’s Facebook page.

Specifically, the constituent blasted the manager for his handling of the pandemic.

The city manager ended up deleting the comments, and eventually blocked the guy entirely.

REICHARD: OK, I think I see the problem. Public official basically shutting down free speech.

ROUGH: That’s howhe saw it. He said being blocked on social media was a violation of his First Amendment rights. But eventually the appeals court for the 6th circuit didn’t see it that way. Its reasoning was that the city manager operated his Facebook page in his personal capacity. But a similar case out of the 9th Circuit decided the other way: that public officials who block constituents do violate their constitutional rights.

So the legal question for the justices boils down to this: Does a public official engage in state action—subject to First Amendment analysis—when he uses social media to communicate with the public about job-related matters and then blocks someone?

EICHER: Right, social media for all its faults and abuses, that’s increasingly our town square, or I guess that’s the argument. However it turns out, that’s one’s going to have a broad effect. But there are more social-media controversies on the docket, right?

REICHARD: That’s right. And just on Friday, the justices took on what’ll be landmark social media cases arising out of Texas and Florida. The allegation is that companies are censoring conservative perspectives. The question is whether states can restrict social media companies from removing those kinds of posts. The companies say the laws strip them of their right to choose what to publish.

EICHER: There’s been another trend with this court: taking on some of the powers of the administrative state, or as some say, the deep state. Back in the Reagan years, I remember it as “the permanent government.” Looks like the court is delving back into that area of the law.

REICHARD: Yes, and there’s a real biggie coming up. It may even drive a stake through the heart of the administrative state. This case is Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo. The facts arise from the fishing industry and the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency.

And here’s why I think this is so big: Because the court could use this case to overrule something called the Chevron Doctrine. That says if a law is silent or ambiguous on an issue, then courts have to defer to agency interpretations.

And what I’m going to tell you next is a classic trivia game answer. Ready?

That Chevron ruling came down in 1984, during the Reagan administration. So 1984 was one year after an EPA administrator resigned. Her name: Anne Gorsuch.

She had a teenage son by the name of Neil.

EICHER: Who would grow up to become an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Do I get to spin again?

REICHARD: Ding, ding, ding. Yes, and he is no fan of Chevron.

Back in 2016, Neil Gorsuch wrote an excoriating critique when he was still a judge on the 10th circuit. He wrote that Chevron, his words, “seems no less than a judge-made doctrine for the abdication of judicial duty.”

EICHER: So back to the Loper case, Mary. What’s the specific controversy there?

REICHARD: Well, a law that requires government surveillance of fishing companies. But it says nothing at all about who pays for that surveillance. Specifically, federal monitors to ride along in the boats. So the agency interpreted the silence of the law to say a whole lot: Meaning it requires that the fishermen pay the salaries of the fishing monitors!

Well, that didn’t go over well, as you can imagine. So the fishermen are suing. And they have a lot of support. As former Solicitor General Paul Clement put it, this is the maritime equivalent of the forced quartering of the British during the American Revolution.

ROUGH: Yeah, that is a big one and it’s not the only Chevron-related case on the docket. It’s just one of them.

Alright, another big case to preview: United States v Rahimi. This one involves illegal drugs and guns. The respondent is a drug dealer who assaulted people and shot at them. He was under a restraining order for domestic violence when he was found in possession of a gun.

That’s against the law, to have a gun while under a restraining order. For breaking that law, he received a sentence of six years in prison. But here’s the wrinkle. Last year the Supreme Court ruled in a big gun case called Bruen. That says restrictions on guns must be rooted in the history and tradition of the United States.

So the 5th Circuit overturned his conviction, reasoning there’s no deep history or tradition taking away a man’s gun under these particular facts.

REICHARD: You know, I read of social workers who found this just absolutely outrageous. But restraining orders are handed out fairly routinely, and to people without a long rap sheet like this guy can get caught up in the prohibition against possessing guns.

ROUGH: Right, so the U.S. government appealed. And that will give the justices a chance to finesse how courts interpret the Second Amendment right to defend yourself with a gun.

REICHARD: Okay, this next one’s made a lot of taxpayers mad: taxing people on money they haven’t even received.

Here, it’s a married couple named Charles and Kathleen Moore. They invested in a business in India that helps farmers there buy power tools. The company did very well, although it didn’t distribute dividends.

And here’s where the Moores got caught up. In 2017, President Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A section of that requires American citizens who own shares of a foreign corporation to pay taxes on their share of corporate earnings, even if no earnings were ever distributed!

So that left the Moores with a $15,000 tax bill on money they never even received. They argue this violates the 16th Amendment. Here’s what that says: “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” The Moores argue this means income has to be distributed before it can be taxed.

ROUGH: Next, another administrative agency dispute. Here, the Securities and Exchange Commission went after a man named George Jarkesy. He’d established hedge funds that controlled about $24 million dollars. The SEC alleged securities fraud against him and opened up an enforcement proceeding. It could do that through federal court or through its own in-house proceeding.

The SEC decided to do it in-house, which means it essentially acts as both prosecutor and judge. Administrative proceedings don’t have juries. So Jarkesy argues that violates his right to a jury trial under the 7th Amendment.

He has two other broad claims beyond the scope of our time, but a decision here has the potential to end the use of administrative courts in agency proceedings.

REICHARD: So those are some highlights of cases already accepted for review.

There are many disputes at the certiorari stage, meaning, appeals made for the court to take a case but not yet accepted. There’s another race-based admissions case involving a top high school. A ruling here could expand on last term’s ruling that struck down the use of race-based admissions policies at universities.

ROUGH: Also pending in that stage are disputes on the abortion front: disputes over the use of the abortion pill mifepristone among the states that protect the unborn.

Finally, Washington state is trying to censor a Christian counselor who gives counsel on sexuality and gender identity. He grounds human identity in God’s design. And his clients want his services and can’t have them. His lawyers have asked the high court to hear his case.

REICHARD: So another blockbuster term ahead, Jenny, thanks for your help. 

ROUGH: Yeah, you betcha. 

REICHARD: 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: Alright, time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David, of course, is head of the wealth management firm of the Bahnson group. And he joins us now. David, good morning.

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

EICHER: Well, I don't want to get into all of the internal details around averting the government shutdown over the weekend. But David, I would like to address a few of the core concerns that got us to this point. Number one, the issue of regular order versus continuing resolutions, because this concerns significant sums of money and how it's allocated. Then number two, that generalized complaint of those who have brought us to this point that we spend too much money, and we're taking on too much debt. But let's begin with point one. Congress under regular order would debate and approve over the course of the legislative year 12 tranches of federal discretionary spending that we know as appropriations bills. But in more recent times, none of that has gotten done. And as the deadline comes all 12 are bundled up into a thing called a continuing resolution that no single person has read, ever could read. And that leads to the idea that we need to pass it to find out what's in it, as a former House Speaker once said, in a completely different context. But with that very kind of simplified setup, David, is a return to the so-called "regular order" worth all of this Washington drama that we had to endure.

BAHNSEN: But the Washington drama is not going to bring us back to this order. It will in no way, shape or form, result in improving the processes that are used. And both parties have used the resolution over and over and over again. And so it is a complete matter of partisan convenience, people become opposed to certain mechanisms when the other party is in charge. And that isn't principled governance - it's convenience, and it's politics. Ultimately, I'm a big fan of the right process of how a bill becomes a law. And I'm a big fan of having a budget that you stick to and going through the appropriations process. The second point you bring up is the far more important one, and I'm excited to address it. But ultimately, the answer to the first step, is it worth it? Is that we don't even have to answer it because we're not going to get it. It's gamesmanship, it's performative, but it is most certainly not going to be effective.

EICHER: Right, because even if they do end up passing all of the appropriations bills, they didn't go through the appropriations process, which is committee and all of the rest. So there's a whole lot more to it.

BAHNSEN: Oh, they're also not going to get approved at the Senate. Yeah. So it's a weird thing. When we on the right (I consider myself a movement conservative, I identify as a member of the political right, it's a very easy thing for me to do), but the thing that I get very confused by is when people on the right all of a sudden act like they don't remember how separation of powers works, and that there is a political reality of a President having to sign a bill into law, of the two chambers of the Congress, including both the House and the Senate. So these things make for nice sound bites and tweets. But the sausage making of legislation was intended by the Founders to be hard.

EICHER: So let's do get to that second point, though, about spending too much, because I would like to revisit that one big truth that no one is really talking about. And we've talked about it before, many times, but it's worth doing again, because all of the drama here concerns discretionary spending and not entitlement programs that live on with nary a discussion.

BAHNSEN: Well, I would even add, by the way, Nick, that the discussion about discretionary spending, I was screaming this a few years ago, that there would be absolutely no way for there to be any moral authority, any credibility, any legitimacy with voters, any upper hand or leverage in the process for people who, when they have political power spend like drunken sailors, to all of a sudden become against discretionary spending increases when they don't have political power, or the same degree of political power. And this is what the process will be to eventual fiscal discipline: a party in charge will have to exercise it and then be able to ask the other party in charge to exercise it when the political winds blow. But as long as we continue to go back and forth of only believing in fiscal discipline when the other party is in charge, it is absolutely not going to happen. And I can't think of a reason why it should because I don't take any of it seriously. And I certainly don't think the rest of America takes it seriously. Your point about if we were to take fiscal discipline seriously, we would be focused on entitlement spending and not discretionary spending is, of course, a mathematical statement of fact, it's a confusing time. 

And again, I don't want to get into the specific candidates and people. But you know, it isn't a big secret that there's real, real, real prominent Republicans saying that we shouldn't be touching entitlements. I don't want to talk about entitlements, let's not go there. So there isn't a unified message. Politics generally follows ideas. Someone has to be a leader here in ideas. I don't know anyone, even a fiscal hawk like me, who is a really a big believer in balanced budgets, and thrift and spending within our means. I don't know anybody who wants to take away entitlement benefits from those who they have been promised to. But some grownup dealing with the future commitments that are made, and how knobs can be turned in a way that represents some path to solvency for the entitlement commitments, I'm, of course, primarily talking here about Social Security and Medicare, on the periphery, we might want to, at some point, address, other transfer payment programs and Medicaid and other funding to states and whatnot. But even at the social and Medicare level, if you're going to address entitlement spending, there has to be a serious idea, serious commitment. And my big fear is that we really have no precedent of doing that. We wait for a crisis, we wait for an emergency, and then we do our worst legislating. We do our worst problem solving. And so I wish that there was some moral authority and some true leadership here. It hasn't come yet. But I think that's the need of the hour, Nick, if we're if we're to take fiscal discipline seriously.

EICHER: Well, I'd like to return to the topic of overheated, dangerous possibly, rhetoric. And that takes us to the UAW strike - The United Auto Workers. The president of the UAW is using the language of class warfare. He said that auto workers played a role in the American and Allied effort to defeat the Nazis in World War Two. And he added that while the enemy was a foreign power in the 1940s, well, we're in a similar war today. Let's listen to UAW president Shawn Fain.

SHAWN FAIN: It's different this time. The enemy is not a foreign power you know across an ocean. The enemy is right here among us. It's corporate greed you know, and the, and how we fight the enemy isn't isn't a liberator bomber, is the true liberators, which is a working class people in the workers of the world.  

So David, I set this up as talking about possibly dangerous rhetoric. Do you dismiss this as just rhetoric to fire up the troops? Or are you concerned by this? Is there any danger?

BAHNSEN: I think the country has to make a decision as to whether or not we believe that this type of reckless rhetoric is wrong all the time, or only when our political opponents use it. So my view is very consistent. I strongly suspect, Nick, that the listeners to WORLD agree, it's either wrong all the time, or it isn't wrong all the time. And this is to me, absolutely unacceptable rhetoric. 

First of all, apart from militarizing it, and that hyper inappropriate historical analogies, just the general class warfare rhetoric that pits labor against capital in this type of adversarial fashion is ideologically Marxian. It is ideologically Marxian. And so I think it isn't new, that part. Unfortunately, this is the way that a lot of organized labor has evolved over the years, is to act as if they're in an eternal death match against capital, against management, and that type of division as opposed to mutual cooperation, earnest negotiation, hard negotiation, there's some elbows as people fight for what they believe makes the most sense for their respective stakeholders. I get all that, but that Marxian class warfare is reckless. 

And then when you go to this level, where we're constantly being told by many on the left, that some of the rhetoric that can often be uttered by others on the right, that appeals to this imagery and comparisons to physical warfare. I think it's wrong all the time. I don't want to be guilty of doing it. And I want to condemn it when people that are often my political and ideological allies do it. But in this case, what Shawn Fain has done is totally over the line and ought to be condemned by people on right and left alike.

EICHER: David, so what else anything in the markets or the economy that we ought to, that ought to come to our attention this week?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, the last week of September was the worst week in the stock market for the year. And so we closed out the third quarter with a pretty negative September. August had been negative as well, but July had been up quite a bit. So it wasn't a terrible quarter. But it ended up being, you know, not a great one, that's for sure. And most of it's really been led by the bond market. And it's something that is a big theme of mine right now, as to the various factors that have pushed the long end of the yield curve, meaning more like 10 year treasury bond rates higher, I think the quantitative tightening the Fed is doing is really starting to have an impact. I think, lower Chinese exports, which results in less dollars being converted into treasuries, I think that's a big factor. And then also, by the way, something I wrote about at WORLD by the way, a year and a half ago, we didn't get the recession many people said (was) coming, or at least we haven't got it yet. And recessions put a downward pressure on bond yields. And the lack of the recession has had to cause those expectations to reverse. And that puts upward pressure on bond yields. And so that's, of course, rattled financial markets. So we'll see as we go into Q4, where things go, what the Fed's posture will be as we get ready to go into this big election year. This is an exciting time to work in finance, I promise you.

EICHER: Alright, David Bahnsen is Founder, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of the Bahnsen Group. You can keep up with David at his personal website, which is bahnsen.com and you can read his very good Dividend Cafe at dividendcafe.com. David, thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, October 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Eighty years ago this week members of the Danish church take bold actions to save Jews hunted by Nazi Germany.

Here’s WORLD Radio intern, Emma Perley.

SOUND: [OCEAN WAVES]

EMMA PERLEY, INTERN: It’s the middle of the night. Dozens of people quietly board a fishing boat in twos and threes. They hide below deck, silent and watchful. The threat of imprisonment and death looms over them. The year is 1943, and Nazi Germany’s control over the people of Denmark is growing.

NEWSREEL AUDIO: We are the Danes. And as all the world knows, we have been a peace loving people, promoting justice and working actively in the cause of democracy.

Even under foreign occupation, that national spirit drives the Danish Resistance to stay two steps ahead of Nazi schemes. German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz alerts Denmark of Gestapo plans to deport the Jews on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

AUDIO: German troops and tanks swarmed the streets, pavements were overrun in a rude exhibition of Nazi arrogance. You had to be on the move not to be trampled to pieces.

On September 29th, Rabbi Marcus Melchior interrupts his prayers in Copenhagen’s main synagogue to announce that the police are planning a raid on the city on the night of October 1st.

But when the Gestapo arrive, they find empty houses. Meanwhile, thirty-five miles north of the capitol hundreds of Jewish refugees arrive by train in the small fishing village of Gilleleje.

SOUND: [TRAIN]

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark sends out a letter for all pastors to read aloud to their congregations. On October 3, Reverend Kjeldgaard Jenson steps into the pulpit of his church in Gilleleje. Here’s the translated letter, read by Andrew Johansen:

ANDREW JOHANSEN: Wherever Jews are persecuted because of their religion or race it is the duty of the Christian Church to protest against such persecution, because it is in conflict with the sense of justice inherent in the Danish people and inseparable from our Danish Christian culture through the centuries. True to this spirit and according to the text of the Act of the Constitution all Danish citizens enjoy equal rights and responsibilities before the Law and full religious freedom. We understand religious freedom as the right to exercise our worship of God as our vocation and conscience bid us and in such a manner that race and religion per se can never justify that a person be deprived of his rights, freedom or property. Our different religious views notwithstanding, we shall fight for the cause that our Jewish brothers and sisters may preserve the same freedom which we ourselves evaluate more highly than life itself.

Jenson and the entire village begin preparing for over five hundred Jewish refugees to cross the Oresund Strait to Sweden.

He and the villagers lease a large schooner, and the refugees rush to the docks. As they push and jostle each other to get on board, a fisherman yells at them to stay in a single file line. Those at the front hear the shouts and mistakenly think the Gestapo has caught up with them. The captain panics and shoves off too early, leaving half of his passengers behind.

The villagers load up as many refugees as they can onto fishing boats. Unfortunately, limited space forces over a hundred refugees to stay behind. Most take shelter in the attic of Jenson’s church. For the next few days, Gilleleje is overrun with Danish Jews hoping to escape to Sweden.

On October 5th, the Gestapo are tipped off. They surround the church and threaten to burn it down. Eventually, the Jews surrender themselves and the Gestapo arrest all but one Jewish child hiding in the belfry. Jenson later writes in his journal that it was a “terrible day for Gilleleje.”

But elsewhere in Denmark…

Surviving Jewish refugee, Esther Chalupovitsch remembers fleeing Copenhagen around the same time. A policeman helped hide her and her family.

CHALUPOVITSCH: He gave us a flashlight and he said don't use the light. We went in there, we closed the doors and there we sat for a whole night and heard the Germans pass by.

They planned to escape on a boat like many other refugees. They traveled south of Copenhagen and stayed in a bishop’s house until he could get them safely down to the harbor.

CHALUPOVITSCH: Everybody was frightened. Because the Germans were everywhere.

They sneaked onto a fishing boat on the night of October 9th. Thirty-two of them packed into the hold like sardines.

CHALUPOVITSCH: But when we got to the shore of Sweden and we were looking up and they said ‘Welcome to Sverige,’ it was just out of this world. We couldn't believe it. Here, the Germans were chasing us. And here, the Swedes were welcoming us.

Esther and her family were one of hundreds of families saved by the Danes over the course of the war. By the war’s end, the Danish resistance successfully saved over 90% of Denmark’s Jewish population from the Holocaust.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: A spaceship recently brought back soil samples from an asteroid. We’ll have a report on the future of space mining. And, WORLD’s Classic Book of the Month for October takes us to Oxford in England to discover true joy.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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

The Bible records Peter kneeling down and praying near a disciple named Tabitha who had died. Peter turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, rise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Acts chapter 9, verses 40 through 42.

Go now in grace and peace.

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