The World and Everything in It: September 26, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

A class action suit filed this month against the U.S. Coast Guard is one of several opposing the Covid vaccine mandate.

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

Also today the Monday Moneybeat: we’ll talk about rising interest rates, signs of recession, and the drama around energy policy.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Two hundred years ago this week, an archeological breakthrough.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, September 26th. 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: Hurricane Ian » Florida is bracing for impact as Hurricane Ian barrels toward the Gulf of Mexico. Gov. Ron DeSantis:

DESANTIS: We have declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties, given the uncertainty of the path of the storm. We’ve done things like wave weight restrictions for commercial trucks.

That’s to help ensure supplies continue to pour into the state ahead of the storm.

Ian is forecast to strengthen into a Category 3 hurricane tomorrow. The eye could then pass over western Cuba or remain offshore.

Its next target is hard to predict exactly. John Cangialosi with the National Hurricane Center.

CANGIALOSI: We’re actually predicting a major hurricane, which is Category 3 or stronger. So we have pretty good confidence that this is going to be quite a big deal. What we don’t really know at this range is who’s going to see the greatest impact.

Computer models show possible landfall anywhere from the Florida-Alabama state line to just north of Ft. Myers in southwestern Florida as early as Wednesday night.

Fiona » Meantime in Canada, hundreds of thousands of people remained without power Sunday after Hurricane Fiona slammed the country’s Atlantic provinces Saturday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

TRUDEAU: People have seen their homes washed away. They’ve seen the winds rip schools’ roofs off. But as Canadians, as we always do in times of difficulty, we will be there for each other.

Officials said they found the body of a woman swept into the sea.

Police said she was inside her residence moments before a wave struck the home, tearing away a portion of the house.

Philippines typhoon » And in the Philippine Sea, the powerful Typhoon Noru slammed into the northeastern Philippines on Sunday.

The storm hit coastal towns and islands with winds of 120 miles per hour. That’s the equivalent of Category 3 hurricane.

Thousands of villagers had to evacuate from the typhoon’s path, as well as from mountainside villages prone to landslides and flash floods.

U.S. warning against nukes » The US government is warning Russia against using nuclear weapons. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press...

SULLIVAN: Russia understands very well what the United States would do in response to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine because we have spelled it out for them. And I will leave it at that today.

Sullivan said the consequences for Russia would be “catastrophic,” adding the United States would respond decisively.

Vladimir Putin made another thinly veiled threat last week to use nuclear weapons in his war against Ukraine.

Russia referendums » Washington says Putin’s actions increasingly reflect desperation. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agrees.

ZELENSKYY (translator): He knows that he’s losing the war. In the battlefield, Ukraine has seized the initiative.

He blasted sham referendums in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Authorities installed by Moscow have been going door to door collecting votes on whether to join Russia. But most global leaders say the vote is illegitimate.

Putin could attempt to use annexation as justification for deploying military conscripts to those parts of Ukraine. 

Gas prices » Gas prices continue to dip. Fuel price analyst Trilby Lundberg says the per-gallon average has dropped 7 cents over the past two weeks.

LUNDBERG: So the new average is $3.78. This is a total drop of $1.32 per gallon during the 15 weeks its been dropping.

She says the Houston area has the cheapest gas of any major city, $2.96 per gallon on average. At the opposite end, San Francisco is at $5.69 per gallon.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: a class action lawsuit against the Coast Guard.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, September 26th, 2022. This is The World and Everything in It and we’re glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Well, the 2022-2023 term of the U.S. Supreme Court begins one week from today, the first Monday in October. We will bring you coverage of every single oral argument again this term as we have for several years.

Meantime, we have today and next week to finish up our summertime project of covering lower-court disputes of interest.

REICHARD: That’s right. Today, we’ll hear about a class-action lawsuit filed this month against the U.S. Coast Guard and other officials over the Covid vaccine mandate.

In August 2021, the Department of Defense issued that mandate for military service members. A steady stream of lawsuits followed with claims the military violated religious freedom rights, among other things.

A leaked memo says the Pentagon has been preparing for these lawsuits.

EICHER: Current litigation includes a class action against the U.S. Marine Corps for denying religious accommodations related to the vaccine. A U.S. District Court in Florida granted preliminary relief in that case.

In this case, one of the lead plaintiffs is Lieutenant Junior Grade Alaric Stone with the US Coast Guard. He sued on behalf of 1,200 other service members whose request for a religious accommodation to the Covid shots have been denied, they say categorically. And now these service members are facing discharge from service.

REICHARD: On Friday, I spoke to Lt. Stone and his lawyer Nathan Loyd of the Thomas More Society. (Now, I should add that I was unsuccessful getting through to the Coast Guard to get a response. I’d still love to have the government’s side of the story, but typically the government doesn’t comment on pending litigation, so let’s not expect that.)

So first we’ll hear from Lt. Stone, and I need to qualify that he speaks only in his personal capacity and not for the US Coast Guard or US Department of Homeland Security.

STONE: My faith is something that I take very, very seriously. And I am a Roman Catholic, I've been involved in the Catholic church since I was very, very young. When the COVID vaccines were first introduced and, you know, I was looking into them, I came across the fact that these vaccines were developed with aborted fetal cells. And this was actually the first time that I came across this issue and realize that this was an issue and the more that I dug into this problem set, and the more that I researched it, the more I was absolutely horrified at what I found once I came across that there was no way that I could take this vaccine in good conscience. 

The Coast Guard does not question Lt. Stone’s sincerity of religious belief. Although a few exemptions have been granted, Stone says the numbers tell the real story:

STONE: I am personally aware of is 12 between both approved initial accommodation requests and denials or it's nine appeals I'm sorry. So that's 12 compared to 1200 submitted and if you do the math on that that's 99% denied so an astronomical number.

Attorney Loyd told me that the few who did receive a religious exemption were already retiring or separating from service.

Many people assume the military is a special situation. You get an order, you follow it, no questions asked. And service members routinely receive certain other vaccinations.

But Loyd says this time’s different:

LOYD: We see that the efficacy of these vaccines are waning. These vaccines had a unique connection to abortion and their development and testing. And so there's so many service members who are saying, “Look, I'll get almost every other vaccine that's required. This one is different. This one has a unique situation. And if I were to go along with this mandate, I'd be violating my conscience, I'd be violating my obligations to God.” And so that that's where the hinge of the legal issue is. The First Amendment protects everybody's rights to freely exercise their religion, and service members don't forego those rights just by putting on a uniform, they're still protected.

Other laws also come into play here. For example, RiFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law in 1990 by President Bill Clinton.

LOYD: And under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the government must accommodate religious behaviors. They can only infringe those religious beliefs and behaviors with the least restrictive means possible. And what we're seeing here is that the covered vaccines are not the least restrictive means for protecting somebody's health against COVID. There's natural immunity, there's masking, there's social distancing, there's screening, all kinds of other alternatives that the military is just refusing to accept as being less restrictive.

Those things- masking and testing- these service members are willing to do.

Inconsistency is a bad look for any organization, including the Coast Guard.

LOYD: The Coast Guard didn't follow its own procedures. And they did this in two ways. First, the Coast Guard has a regulation saying that they will give exemptions to people if they have a history of prior infection or serological testing showing immunity and Aleric and the rest of our plaintiffs have that. But the Coast Guard is just refusing to follow its own regulation.

The lawsuit also includes another claim:

LOYD: And then there's another issue under the Administrative Procedure Act that the Coast Guard says all service members are allowed to appeal a denial of their religious accommodation requests. The appeal authority, though, is the supervisor of the person who initially denied that appeal.

Service members who aren’t granted a religious exemption from the Coast Guard face repercussions. Lt. Stone says he knows several people who’d been selected to advance, then told they won’t unless they get the shot.

STONE: The Coast Guard has released policies denying service members access to training that they need to fulfill their jobs and continue to advance in their own career fields. And even after released guidance relaxing some of these restrictions, the Coast Guard has still denied service members citing its old policy, which was incredibly strict and too draconian. So while on the surface, it appears that the Coast Guard has tried to relax some of its restrictions, in reality, they are still very much in force. For a large period of time service members were restricted in terms of their ability to travel outside a very limited radius of the unit in which they were serving at. And folks that were prevented from seeing family members, you know, wives children for months and months and very much restricted in their their ability to live normal lives. And right now, service members being restricted from actually continuing their service, something that they very much want to continue doing with one service member that I'm personally aware of already having been discharged as of Monday this week, and dozens more facing discharge in just the coming weeks alone.

Aside from these aspects, lawyer Loyd mentioned another one:

LOYD: But I think one of the most endemic issues here that is kind of latent, kind of hidden, is the idea of moral injury. Moral injury is what occurs when you're forced to witness or commit an act that your conscience is telling you is wrong. And we're seeing this, this harming obviously, the vaccine objectors who are just doing their best to follow their conscience. But we're also seeing this even among vaccinated people who are forced to punish their subordinates and report their peers in order to comply with this mandate.

That also harms unit morale.

Lawyer Loyd cited a Supreme Court ruling that says speculative future outcomes cannot be the basis to deny a religious right. That applies to Lt. Aleric Stone.

STONE: We see the same kind of principle present, especially with Aleric here. Aleric has meticulously followed all of the mitigation protocols, he is has been exemplary in following the protocols and ensuring that his troops have also followed the protocols to the point where Aleric was on all kinds of deployments all around the world, and state COVID free for the vast majority of of the time when he was deployed.

Lt. Stone referred to the first Commander in Chief, George Washington, to emphasize his stance:

STONE: I think that he put it very, very well when he wrote, "When we assume the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen." And, yes, George Washington wrote that to indicate that even when the times were the toughest, even when the most draconian measures would have been justified, he's indicating that you know, soldiers are still citizens, they're still citizens serving their countrymen in a military capacity, but citizens nonetheless is still subject to their constitutional liberties.

It’s early days for this class-action lawsuit. A judge has already denied the class a temporary restraining order; the government must file a brief in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, service members face termination until this is resolved.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our weekly conversation on business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen, head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. Good morning!

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

EICHER: Well, everyone saw it coming, the Federal Reserve last week increased its target interest rate— the so-called fed-funds rate—raising it 75 bps, three-quarters of a percentage point after doing the same in June and July.

And again, not a surprise. But was there anything about the Fed’s rate hike that was noteworthy to you?

BAHNSEN: I suppose a quick comment just on the only thing that was somewhat of a difference, we knew they were raising three quarters of a point, it's the third in a row doing that. Remember, they had also done half a point and a quarter point in the two meetings before that. So you basically now have 3%, as the fed funds target, up to three and a quarter, there's a range. And so they will likely get closer to 4% by the end of the year. And the Fed set their expectations. And their predictions, what they call the dot plot, where they're forecasting their rate will end up being at 4.4. And then they set their dotplot for the end of next year at 4.6. So basically, they're kind of assuming that they're not going to be changing rates, they won't be continuing to hike rates next year, once they get up to that level, nor are they forecasting that they'd be cutting it.

Now the first comment that I made in Dividend Cafe last week that I want to reiterate, there's been no worse predictor of interest rates in my lifetime than the Fed’s own predictions of what they're going to do. Their dot plot has so imperfectly tracked with what has actually ended up happening that it's been comical. And yet, I just want to point out the current state of Fed expectation, they see themselves going another point in the quarter, and then basically stopping.

EICHER: David, talk about the market reaction to the Fed’s move.

BAHNSEN: I think that the biggest news over the last week was with the really significant downward pressure in the stock market. And massive upward pressure in bond yields, that you basically have a market right now that on one hand is pricing in a recession they think will come because of Fed policy, and the stock market side, and then a bond market pricing and a lot of what is happening in the Fed policy. And it's setting us up for the mother of all reverses in the bond market because you can't have bond yields going higher when you go into a recession. In a recession, it prices in much less growth, negative growth, and in fact, a flight to safety, which pushes bond prices higher and yields lower. And so there's just significant drama forming in capital markets. And it's gonna be quite interesting to see how some of these tales play out in the months to come.

EICHER: Okay, well, speaking of drama, let's turn to the biggest drama in Washington, DC, public policy. Senator Joe Manchin released the details of his energy bill on permitting. This was Manchin collecting on the deal he made in exchange for his crucial support back in August for the big spending legislation variously referred to as the Inflation Reduction Act or the Climate bill as it’s also known.

He extracted a promise from his fellow Democrats for a vote on a bill he wanted and of course Manchin is pro-fossil fuel as he’s from West Virginia. But last week, we got details of his legislation. What did you think of it?

BAHNSEN: Well, basically, the bill on its own, I generally like. I just don't like what the quid pro quo was to get there. Now, I don't think that the bill does nearly as much as I would like it to do I think that there ought to be a significantly more aggressive posture towards approving and permitting both pipeline projects and drilling allowances on federal land, removing some of the really silly state regulatory objections to keep some of these approvals from happening is I think, a good step. And what they do was they basically in this bill, when the federal regulators have said there's no water problems with a particular project that say the states are not allowed to come back and act as if there is. And what he's doing there is pointing out, well, we've all known for a long time, is that state agencies are circumventing law by making up concerns about water, where even the federal regulators and environmental authorities have said there isn't a water concern. So there's things like that, that it does that I like, but it doesn't go far enough. And I don't like the price he had to pay to get it. And then we'll see if they're able to get it through because their plan right now is to attach it to the bill to fund government. And that's daring some of these Democrat progressives who are against it to vote against it. And they may very well do so thinking that the blame for shutting down government would not go on them. And then they could make a motion to have just a standalone bill for funding government. And then they dare Manchin to block that. So there's real political gamesmanship going on within the Democrat Party, and there is a better than 50/50 chance that Senator Manchin gets really played here. This is going to be quite a soap opera to watch.

EICHER: Alright, listener question from a voice I think you will recognize.

BASHAM: Hey, Nick and David, this is your old colleague Megan Basham! Long-time listener, first-time caller. I saw this story and immediately thought, I really need to get David’s take on this one. Here’s what it was: JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said a few days ago that submitting to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s ESG agenda would be “the road to hell for America.” Is this true? And if so, why is it true?

EICHER: Great to hear Megan—and just a quick point of clarification, the “ESG agenda,” that means “environmental, social, and governance” principles to bring the corporate world into line with progressive social values, anti-fossil fuels for example. So, go ahead, David.

BAHNSEN: Well, I love the question, Megan. And I certainly loved that clip with Jamie Dimon and the congresswoman. And specifically what she said is, “Will your bank commit to not providing any further funding to any fossil fuel right away?” And so Jamie is an advocate of net zero emissions by 2050. And I'm not and I don't agree with him on that yet, he's pointing out the absurdity of the extreme position, that you can have no output from fossil whatsoever, or that bank somehow are supposed to practice the art of censorship of such projects. Blocking any financing of new production with natural gas is a way to make people freeze to death. And Jamie knows it, and all grownups know it, and the congresswoman should be ashamed of herself, not only for the ridiculous position she holds, but that incredibly inappropriate framing of the question to their banking executive guests. I think that fundamentally highlights the problem we have right now with ESG is it's an ideological movement, not an environmental one. And it is asking other people to take the sacrifice; it’s asking other people to have less power, less warmth, less production. And we've seen how that's worked out with a Europe it's made them really mercilessly at the control of an unfriendly power with Putin and Russia. And the notion that Congresswoman Tlaib want us going down this path is insane. And I commend the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon for standing up to her and saying so.

EICHER: You can submit your question for the Moneybeat Mailbag, feedback@worldandeverything.com. We do plan to keep making time for questions and I wanted to use Megan’s question because it was so timely. But you can ask anything that’s on your mind around business, economics, and finance. The Moneybeat Mailbag at feedback@worldandeverything.com.

David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. His personal website is Bahnsen.com.

David, talk to you next time. Thanks!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, September 26th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming up next: the WORLD History Book. Today, we’ll tell you about a World Series filled with firsts and about some past innovations that helped shape the future.

But before we get to that, 200 years ago, a French scholar cracked a code that gave us insight into ancient history. Here’s arts and media editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO, REPORTER: On September 27th 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion announced that he had deciphered the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone. For the first time in almost 1500 years someone was able to read ancient Egyptian writing.

A French officer found the stone in Egypt during Napoleon’s campaign in 1799. After the British defeated the French in Egypt, they took the stone to London. The Rosetta Stone bears an inscription in three different scripts—Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic, and Greek. Scholars thought that by comparing the three scripts they might be able to decode the hitherto indecipherable hieroglyphics. Academics all over the world worked on the problem, often stealing ideas from one another. But in the end, the relatively young Champollion figured it out.

Bob Briers describes Champollion’s moment of breakthrough for the Great Courses.

BOB BRIERS: Champollion rushes over to his brother’s house and says, “I’ve done it,” and faints. He is so overcome and exhausted that he remains in bed for five days. When he finally gets out of bed and resumes work, Champollion starts reading out loud all the words he has on the Rosetta Stone and listens for Coptic matches. Soon he has dozens and dozens of words. Now he really can translate hieroglyphs.

Champollion was one of the only scholars working on the problem to have bothered to learn the modern language of the Coptic Christians living in Egypt. And that knowledge gave him an edge in deciphering hieroglyphics.

Soon after Champollion’s discovery, scholars began filling in many of the gaps in Egyptian history using the wealth of writings that had perplexed researchers for more than a millennia.

Next we head to the 1947 World Series.

Seventy-five years ago this week game one began with the New York Yankees taking on their crosstown rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was a series of many firsts. Plenty of future hall of famers played—guys like Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio—but this was the first World Series in which a black player took the field—Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson.

ANNOUNCER: In the Dodgers’ half of the first with one out, Jackie Robinson draws a base on ball. He dances back and forth to worry pitcher Shea who tries to pick him off. On Shea’s second pitch to Reiser, the fleet footed Robinson lights out for second and beats catcher Berra’s hurried throw to Rizzuto.

1947 was also the first year the World Series was televised, though it aired in only a few major cities on the east coast. But the little bit of extra money coming from television rights helped boost the series’ profits to more than $2 million for the first time. The Yankees beat the Dodgers in seven games. When the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series again two years later everyone east of the Mississippi River could watch the game on TV. By the 1952 World Series, all of America from coast to coast could watch the Yankees beat the Dodgers yet again.

Next we head to 1982 for a couple of momentous moments in entertainment history.

Forty years ago this week, EPCOT Center opened as the second theme park at Walt Disney World in Florida.

Walt Disney had originally conceived of EPCOT as being a real city that would serve as a model for the future. EPCOT stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and Walt planned for it to be a hub of innovation and technology. After his death in 1966, the Disney company abandoned his idea for creating a real city. But they kept the name and folded some of the original ideas into the new theme park.

At the grand opening, Disney CEO Card Walker stood before EPCOT’s iconic geodesic dome and offered these thoughts echoing Walt’s desire to create the city of tomorrow.

CARD WALKER: Our goals for EPCOT Center are quite clear. We want to first entertain, then inform and inspire all who come here and above all to instill in our guests a sense of belief and pride in mankind’s ability to shape a world that offers real hope to people everywhere in the world.

The same day Disney launched its new theme park devoted to innovation, Sony and Philips released a new technology that would revolutionize the music industry—the compact disc. The two companies cooperated on the design to avoid a format war like the one waged between 8-tracks and cassette tapes. The Australian Broadcasting Company explains the exciting new technology:

ANNOUNCER: The player itself is a huge advance over conventional record players because it gives you the same sort of control you have on a tape recorder—fast forward and fast reverse scanning, pause and stop buttons, and the ability to instantly select any track you want.

One of those early CD players cost about $1000, but prices came down quickly. Within five years, CD sales had overtaken vinyl records—three years later they overtook cassette tapes. But the digital revolution CDs helped spawn would eventually lead to the format's demise when harddrives became more efficient methods for storing music.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: children are back in classrooms after the pandemic. But some teachers are bringing their students back outdoors—we’ll find out why.

And, the violent tactics of those who support abortion.

Plus reuniting old photographs with their families.

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 says: Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. (Psalm 37:8-9 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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