WORLD Radio Rewind

LEIGH JONES: This is WORLD Radio Rewind: a 10-minute review of some of our news coverage and features from the past week on WORLD Radio. I’m managing editor Leigh Jones.

First up, a changing of the guard. After 16 years under Angela Merkel, Germany will get a new chancellor later this year. On Tuesday’s program, Jenny Lind Schmitt reported on how the new government might approach the country’s role in geopolitics.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, REPORTER: Merkel’s decision last year to step down as chancellor sent Germany’s political parties into a flurry ahead of September’s elections.

While some Germans just wanted change, most wanted Merkel’s style of reliable leadership to continue. But her pick to replace her as head of the conservative Christian Democratic Party failed to connect with voters. The left-leaning Social Democratic Party, the SPD, won the election.

ROLOFF: The smaller partners can form a possible coalition...

Professor Ralf Roloff is deputy dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George Marshall Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Roloff says that while foreign policy didn’t come up much during the campaign, he expects Merkel’s policies to continue.

ROLOFF: The limitations for a new government to completely reshape German security and foreign policy are not that big. All of the three partners are fully committed to NATO, They are fully committed to the European Union in different ways.

One exception? The consistently strong stance the Green Party has taken on human rights in Russia, China, and other autocracies. That emphasis is likely to continue in a coalition.

ROLOFF: Just recently, two years ago, we started to discuss the security implications. And not so much in terms of the hard security implications, but the security implications that stem from the economic interdependence with China. So China buying into many companies in Germany or in Europe.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

LJ: Next up, a win for moderates. President Biden planned to spend $3.5 trillion dollars on a massive expansion of government programs. But members of his own party balked. On Wednesday’s program, Mary Reichard talked to the Heritage Foundation’s Joel Griffith about how Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema held their ground.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about Senators Manchin and Sinema now. They were the two lawmakers preventing the $3.5 trillion plan from moving forward. What were their biggest concerns with the original plan?

GRIFFITH: Well, just their concerns are really just on the massive expansion of government that it will elicit, it will entail. And in an era over the past year in which families, regardless of income level are really experiencing this price squeeze when you go to the grocery store, when you go to fill up your car, when you go to buy a new house, I think people are really starting to connect the dots between government policy—whether it's shutdowns or borrowing or printing more money—and economic pain. And I think there's a realization now within not just conservatives, but those that typically favor an expansion of government, I think there's a realization that we are getting close to that fiscal precipice. We're starting to experience that pain now. What I find a bit amusing are that even these two senators that are now opposing—Senator Sinema, Senator Manchin—opposing this $3.5 trillion package, they actually supported a number of other proposals, as did most senators, over the past year and a half that ramped our government spending up to unprecedented levels. I mean, think about what we've spent over the past year combined with what's been proposed over the next year, we're talking about over $9 trillion in just a 12 month period. That's almost $100,000 per family of four. And these numbers have gotten so big that now you're considered a moderate if you only supported a few trillion dollars of additional spending over this past year. Just a few years ago, that would have been considered radical, and it shows just how awful the fiscal mismanagement has become where a trillion and a half sounds like a compromise when before that would have been a historically large spending explosion.

REICHARD: Joel Griffith with the Heritage Foundation has been our guest. Joel, thanks so much!

GRIFFITH: Thanks for having me.

LJ: Next, kinks in the supply chain. Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? On Thursday’s program, Josh Schumacher explained why you’d better begin working on that list as soon as possible.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Mike Gregerson works at Spokes, Etc. Bicycles in Vienna, Virginia. He’s in charge of ordering all the bikes, parts, and other gear.

GREGERSON: Right now, very few things that we need are in stock somewhere. So firms everything we we need, we order. And then it comes in a week or two. Sometimes it's a year or two out with some bikes right now. Next availabilities. Sometime in 2024. And we're in what? October 2021. So it's a, it's a big hurdle, trying to figure out what we need when it's coming in and kind of planning around that.

Spokes isn’t the only business having problems getting products. Companies all across the country are struggling to fill customers’ orders. Earlier this month, President Biden tried to speed things up by asking one of the nation’s busiest ports to stay open around the clock.

BIDEN: The Port of Los Angeles announced today that it's going to be begin operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And Biden hopes other parts of the transportation supply chain will follow suit. In theory, that should help businesses like Spokes get their products faster. Mike Gregerson says just about everything he orders comes through one of those busy California ports.

GREGERSON: Pretty much everything we get comes from Asia. So it's all coming from boats, so it's trying to offload in the boat. So all the shipping through California, and rail and truck and everything. So we have to deal with that as much as everyone else does.

But moving ports to 24/7 operations might not make much of a difference in the short term. Lane Cohee teaches about supply chains at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

COHEE: If you just stopped, you know, all shipping into those two ports, it would take 11 days, to clear all that backlog. And obviously, nobody's stopping the shipping. So it's going to take some time, like any log jam, to work through it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher in Vienna, Virginia.

LJ: And finally, the Biden administration’s attempt to stifle free speech at local school board meetings. On Thursday’s program, Lauren Dunn reported on the dustup over how to handle parental dissent over pandemic policies.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Dick Bergstrom served on the school board in Bloomington, Minnesota, from 2012 until January 2020. Most of his term pre-dated debates over critical race theory or COVID-19 prevention measures. But Bergstrom says school officials still had plenty of experience dealing with angry parents.

BERGSTROM: But when you get a lot of passionate people in one room and they're hollering and screaming and I know where you live, and I'm going to boycott your, I'm going to sit in front of your driveway, so you can't take your trash out. You name it, it has happened.

But that tension has spiked in the last 18 months. Some schools have even reported violence. A California elementary teacher went to the hospital with bruises and lacerations on his face after a confrontation with a parent upset over mask requirements. It was the first day of class.

Still, some question whether involving federal authorities is the best answer to a local problem. Tyson Langhofer heads Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Academic Freedom. ADF has asked Garland to withdraw his order due to its concerning implications.

LANGHOFER: One, it vilifies largely peaceful parents who are simply expressing concerns over very radical ideologies that are being pushed at school boards throughout the country. And two, it's going to, you know, unconstitutionally chill, that the speech of parents who are simply voicing concern for the well-being of the children, and for the ideologies that are being taught in our schools.

While he agrees that specific threats of violence should be investigated, Langhofer says local threats are best handled by local law enforcement. And, he says they already have the tools they need to do their jobs.

LANGHOFER: To invoke the power of the federal government, the FBI, to come in and investigate parents who are simply expressing concern at local school board meetings. That's a misuse of federal power.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

LJ: That’s it for this edition of WORLD Radio Rewind.

We’ve posted links to each of the stories we highlighted today in our transcript. You can find that on our website.

Next week, a pandemic silver lining. Lots of people lost their jobs during COVID-related shutdowns. But some of them put their extra time to good use, starting their own businesses. We’ll introduce you to a few of them. And Ankara’s ambitions. We’ll tell you why the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan gave Turkey something to celebrate.

For the latest news, features, and commentary from WORLD News Group, visit wng.org. For WORLD Radio, I’m Managing Editor Leigh Jones.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.