What A Day - It's Arraigning Men

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Former President Donald Trump will make his first court appearance in Manhattan today, to answer to criminal charges handed down by a grand jury on Thursday. He’s expected to face dozens of charges related to hush money he paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Starbucks is facing more scrutiny, after former CEO Howard Schultz was grilled by Senate lawmakers last week over the company’s labor practices and allegations of union-busting. Michelle Eisen, who helped form the chain’s first-ever bargaining unit in Buffalo, New York, joins us to discuss where things stand for Starbucks Workers United.And in headlines: Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin conceded defeat to the country's right-wing National Coalition Party, a federal judge temporarily blocked Tennessee’s anti-drag law, and NASA named the crew for its first lunar mission in 50 years.Show Notes:Starbucks Workers United – https://sbworkersunited.org/Vote Save America – https://votesaveamerica.com/What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastCrooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffeeFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Tuesday, April 4th. I'm Josie Duffy Rice. And I'm Trevelle Anderson, and this is What A Day, where just when we think Elon Musk can't get more annoying, he changes the Twitter icon to a Doge avatar. I was super confused, because why was there a dog on my Twitter page? Like everything confusing in my life, the answer is Elon Musk. On today's show, Wisconsin voters head to the polls in an election that could determine the fate of abortion rights in that state. Plus, our last story may compel you to water your houseplants more often. But first, Trump landed in New York from Florida on Monday in preparation for his expected arraignment today in Manhattan criminal court.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicted Trump on charges related to hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Cable News devoted a ton of time to this on Monday, lots of tracking his plane and watching him descend and, you know, giving more media attention to Donald Trump. What could go wrong? Attention that's not even necessary. Like who cares when he touches down in New York? Not me. Not me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK, so, Josie, do we know exactly what charges Trump is facing at this point yet? Well, there are rumors of 30 plus charges. Many, if not all, are related to campaign finance violations. But we actually don't know quite yet because the indictment is currently under seal, which means it's not public.

At the latest, we expect that indictment to be unsealed once Trump actually appears in court at around 2.15 Eastern time. Several media outlets have asked the judge to unseal the indictment earlier. Still at this point, those requests have not been granted or denied. OK, so after he's arraigned, what happens next? Can we expect this to go straight to trial from there? Well, Treville, what happens next is a long, arduous road that will certainly wear on all of our mental health. Yes, it could possibly go to trial. It's certainly not impossible. There are basically three possibilities here, right? The charges get dropped. He pleads out to some lesser charges or it goes to trial. According to NPR, it's pretty unlikely that this case is pled out.

The Trump we all know and quote unquote love, love italicized in sarcasm font, is like unlikely to accept a settlement here. That's just not his style. Like he's a drama king he likes to play up the underdog the victimizing right like this is a chance to make himself seem persecuted so it's pretty possible this goes to trial and that will take a long time like it's pretty much guaranteed that he'll be out on his own recognizance he's not going to be held in jail pre-trial or anything that would be i mean I mean, shocking. And like I said, if it were to go to trial, it would be a really long time until we got there. So a year, at least, probably. Like, choosing a jury alone would take a very long time.

Very few people are unbiased in one direction or the other when it comes to Trump. It's just going to be an enormously, enormously long process. I am happy to volunteer as an unbiased jury member, Josie. I'm volunteering to review the evidence and make an unbiased decision. I have a feeling Trump's lawyers will love having a member of the media on. He loves the media, if you haven't heard. So he'll be thrilled. He'll choose you immediately. Absolutely.

Why not? Everybody loves me. It's true. Even Republicans. It is true. You'll be thrilled. He'll choose you immediately. Absolutely. Why not? Everybody loves me. It's true. Even Republicans. It is true. You're very charming. I do what I can. You do.

All right. So what else then can we expect today since he likely is not going to jail? So New York City is preparing for anything, really. Here's Mayor Eric Adams discussing the preparation. New York City is always ready. We know that this is a city where our NYPD and other law enforcement entities must be prepared at any given moment for anything to happen in this city. Just shockingly and specific. So city authorities are expecting a lot of protesters.

Trump has encouraged his own supporters to show up outside of the courthouse. There will probably be anti-Trump protesters there. Apparently, every single eligible NYPD officer is expected to be on duty today, which is not a small amount of people. downtown Manhattan, right? It's near like a lot of other courthouses or legal facilities, basically. It's near the ICE field office where undocumented migrants have their cases held day after day. Other court systems have actually announced that they will be closed today because of the mayhem, but ICE reportedly remains open for business naturally. This could certainly have a chilling effect on those who are expected to show up to immigration court today and, you know, the backlash that they might face by Trump supporters, etc. So I think we can expect chaos. That feels like a fair assumption. Well, all righty then.

Buckle up, everybody. Thank you so much for that, Josie. Now on to an update on a story we've been following for a little minute now. That is of the efforts of Starbucks Workers United, the union representing baristas at the coffee chain across the country. You might remember that back in 2021, the first ever Starbucks unionized in Buffalo, New York. Since then, over 270 other locations have formed their own collective bargaining units, the latest being just yesterday when workers at the Marketplace Drive Starbucks in Rochester, New Hampshire, became the first in their state to

file for a union election. Here's a bit of what they said in their letter announcing the decision. Quote, we love our jobs and our hopes for it aren't extravagant. We want to be active in the process of how our stores run. We want to be trained and staffed to meet the demand we are presented with and to give a consistent, clean, safe, and pleasant experience to our customers. We want to feel heard and safe where we work. Wages that reflect that essential status. Steady hours that guarantee we will actually be able to access the robust benefits package the company boasts. But of course, Josie, capitalism is capitalism-ing. And so the higher-ups at the company have basically been stalling at the negotiation table

and employing other union-busting tactics to deter this wave of organizing. So much so that National Labor Review Board regional directors have issued at least 80 complaints against the company. And the National Labor Review Board said recently that Starbucks actually violated federal law by refusing to fairly negotiate. I really love the line of our hopes are not extravagant. It's just a reminder that what people are asking is like a living wage. Simple things. Simple, simple things. Like they want to be able to take sick days.

They want to be able to know their schedule in advance. They want to be able to be paid enough money to pay their rent. It's basic, right? And Starbucks former CEO and former presidential candidate, if you may have blocked that out, as you should have, Howard Schultz, recently testified before Congress about all of this, right? And he's a huge labor rights supporter. Just kidding. He's not. He is not.

And yes, he did testify before Congress. We should say, right, that he has stepped down. He is no longer CEO, as you mentioned. But organizers say he is definitely the mastermind behind the company's approach to unions. And under the threat of subpoena, he had to answer to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee last week, also known as the HELP Committee. Bernie Sanders chairs that committee, in case you were wondering. And we mentioned the tense back and forth between Sanders and Schultz last week on the show. The TLDR of it is that Schultz said his company has done nothing wrong. And, you know, in the words of Maury Povich,

the lie detector test determined that was a lie. Yeah, did it ever, which is shocking because I've never heard of a presidential candidate and CEO of a Fortune 500 company lying. No way. They don't do that type of thing, you know, Chelsea. No.

Now, one of the people attending that hearing was Michelle Eisen. She's a Starbucks barista and union organizer who was actually part of the group that unionized the first Starbucks back in 2021.

I got a chance to check in with her earlier this week about where things stand for Starbucks Workers United. And I started by asking her about her reaction in 2021. I got a chance to check in with her earlier this week about where things stand for Starbucks Workers United. And I started by asking her about her reaction to Schultz's testimony. Take a listen. There was, I don't want to say shock, but I think some people were genuinely shocked that he could sit up there and actually lie. There was some actual audible laughter that happened in that room, you know, mostly because

I think it's either laugh or cry. And to hear this man just deny all of these things. I think one of the most important or interesting statements that he made is when he was repeatedly asked why he gave all of these improved benefits to non-union workers when he came back to the company, but then made the actual statement that I'm not giving these to the unionized workers or the workers that are organizing. And he kept saying, well, I was under the impression that legally I wasn't allowed to do that. And then finally, when he was confronted with the actual truth, which is that there is no legality behind that. If the unionized workers say, no, we'd like those benefits too. There's no legal reason the company can't give those benefits to

the unionized workers. The only reason they don't give them to the unionized workers is it's retaliation and it's a punishment for organizing. And most of the benefits that he gave to these workers were based off proposals that the union made after we won, like expanded dress code, faster accrual of sick time, credit card tipping. These were all our own proposals that the company was like, you know what? Those are really great ideas. So to see him on the hot seat for that, and to just see him kind of squirm. This is a man who's not used to squirming like that. Yeah, you know, for folks who haven't organized a union before I happen to have, can you paint a picture of what union busting really looks like, you know, in real life and in particular from your view as a worker for folks who just don't have any conception of what that might look like? pain. It looked like Starbucks corporate shipping in over a hundred plus out of town managers to infiltrate our stores, to be next to you, you know, when you're putting a grilled cheese in the oven,

to follow you into the back room when you're going to get a sleeve of cups, all in an attempt to surveil and intimidate you from talking about the union with your coworkers, from bringing up any issues in the store that may want to cause your coworkers to support the union efforts. Here, what they did was they called it support managers. And they said that the reason that all of the issues existed in our stores here was because our management was so poor. And so they'd sent these new managers in to teach our managers how to be better so that we wouldn't form a union. They also insisted that the issues we were having at all of our stores here didn't exist in any other stores in the country, that it was just this particular market. And they were very sorry. They didn't know what had happened,

but they were here and they were going to fix all of our problems, which by the way, is a violation of US labor law. Once a campaign has been started, you can't come in and solicit grievances, which means you can't make things better and you can't make things worse. You have to leave things alone until after the election to keep things fair. None of that happened. I mean, we're talking people all the way up the chain of command to Rossanne Williams, who at that point was the president of Starbucks North America. She makes something like $4 million a year. And she's coming into my store and asking me if she can take out the trash and get a bucket of ice in her $500

plus suit, just making a mockery of our jobs. It was incredibly insulting. It's funny because they were all doing this. And then it made the press that they were coming into these stores and cleaning the bathroom and these crazy expensive suits. Like the next day they showed up in our stores wearing these like buffalo sweatshirts and like hoodies and like joggers. And I was like, your cosplay is the working class. Like what is going on right now? It also looked like captive audience meetings, which is essentially forcing hourly workers into a meeting and saying, you know, you don't have to attend this meeting, but if you want to get paid for the rest of your shift, you do have to attend this meeting. So you're telling people who are living paycheck to paycheck, they're going to lose their entire shift or half their shift or part of their shift if they don't come and sit in this hotel conference room and have you talk at them for an hour about why they shouldn't join a union.

That's what it looks like. It looks like intimidation. In some cases, it looks like promises and promotions. They were taking one 16-year-old barista out to lunch weekly and telling her she was going to be the next district manager of our market. This is a child. They will say anything they need to say to get that no vote. We know that Schultz, of course, has stepped down as CEO, leaving Laxman Narasimhan to assume the role. You know, immediately, he's been quick to make an impression from what we can tell from the outside looking in. He's been pictured working in some stores alongside baristas. He's committed to

working as a barista for a half day a month to, quote, stay connected with workers and the company culture. As a worker, as a barista, does that mean anything to you and your co-workers that he's giving up a half day, a month to be in the trenches with you all? No, I mean, that does not. I'm looking at this as potentially, you know, Schultz is stepping down. Lakshman has a chance to actually write this ship and actually come to the table. If you want to know what it's like to be a barista, if you want to know what your workers are going through, if you want to, you know, have that experience, sit across the table from them and have a constructive conversation when they're not trying to make a hundred drinks in five minutes, because you're not going to hear their problems. They're not going to be able to

voice those appropriately when they're just trying to keep their head above water and try to keep you from whatever mistakes you're about to make. Because, you know, I'm sorry, sir, but you don't just get to step in for a half a day once a month and expect things to go smoothly. In fact, the baristas working around you are probably going to struggle really hard that day trying to make sure that mistakes don't happen. And it's because that's not your job. That was my conversation with Starbucks union organizer Michelle Eisen. We'll keep you posted, of course, on how the organizing effort goes. And hopefully Starbucks will get its you know what together and soon. But that's the latest for now. We'll be back after some ads.

Let's get to some headlines. Headlines. It's been a busy couple of days for finland for starters its center-left prime minister sana marin conceded defeat monday to the country's right-wing national coalition party following a close three-way race you may remember that we've mentioned marin on the show last summer after she essentially fought for her right to party the then 36 year old came under fire after a relatively tame video surfaced of her dancing in a nightclub with some friends, prompting her critics to demand that she take a drug test. She refused. Progressive female politician makes international news for going out with her friends.

Not cool. But more importantly, Marin's government spearheaded the effort for Finland to join NATO following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Finland will officially join the alliance today after Turkey's parliament voted to approve its application. However, Turkey and Hungary continue to stonewall Sweden's entry. And if you're in Wisconsin, you better get your behind to a polling station because today is the day to choose a new justice for the state Supreme Court. You've heard us talk about this election on the show before, but we can't stress it enough.

This is the most important election of the year and will determine the fate of abortion rights in the Badger State and whether all of us in the U.S. can have a shot at retaining a functional representative democracy. Wisconsin voters, the choice is between the progressive candidate, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasewicz, and the conservative Dan Kelly, who has not only been outspoken against abortion access, but also has ties to the Stop the Steal movement. We'll let you think about

that for a minute. You don't need much time, though, because it should be obvious to not vote for him. Okay? Polls are open today from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Wisconsin has same-day voter registration, so there's still time to help get out the vote. You can also head over to votesaveamerica.com

for more information. Also, if you don't live in Wisconsin, you should be following this race. And if you don't live in Wisconsin, you should know when the next judicial elections are in your state because these are very important elections and conservatives have basically taken them over.

So just a note, I'm your resident fake lawyer. I did go to law school and passed the bar. That's enough. From Trump to Goop, there's been a panoply of juicy court drama in the news this past week, but we wanted to give a hopeful update on a story that had thus far been a bit of a drag, the controversial Tennessee law targeting drag performers, which would broadly criminalize what it defined as, quote, adult cabaret entertainment. That law was blocked by a federal judge last Friday, hours before it was set to take effect. Judge Thomas Parker awarded a 14-day temporary

restraining order against the bill on behalf of the Memphis-based LGBT advocacy and theater group Friends of Georges, who sued on the grounds that the bill violated their First Amendment rights. Said a spokesperson for Friends of Georges, quote, we won because this is a bad law. of georges who sued on the grounds the bill violated their first amendment rights said a spokesperson for friends of georges quote we won because this is a bad law we look forward to our day in court where the rights for all tennesseans will be affirmed the art of drag performance will live to death drop another day i know that's right we're not out of the woods yet 14 days is not enough 14 days is not enough we are still holding out hope and whatnot, but we will take this little bit of a win.

Okay, we could use something to smile about. Yep, absolutely. Yesterday, NASA announced a history making roster of astronauts for their first moon expedition in 50 years as part of its Artemis program. The crew will include the first black, first female, and first Canadian astronauts

ever assigned to a NASA lunar mission. Joining Commander Reid Weissman will be astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Their mission is simple, pilot NASA's Orion capsule around the moon and return back to Earth. The 10-day endeavor, which NASA seeks to complete by late 2024, will be a warm-up for a two-person moon landing set for around 2025. While the astronauts for that mission have not been selected yet, NASA announced in April of 2021 that it intends to land the first woman as well as the first person of color on their next trip to the moon's surface.

Oh, God. Okay, you may have thought that was a weird mistake with your audio system but it wasn't to sort of kind of quote prince this is what it sounds like when plants cry i wish i was kidding i wish i was kidding a team of scientists at tel aviv university discovered that when in conditions of drought or stress plants were shown to emit a ultrasonic sound of suffering the sounds you've just heard have been pitched down and sped up in their organic form. The typical human ear wouldn't be able to pick up on the distress signals. But the scientists posit that animals with a more acute sense of hearing,

like bats, mice, and moths, may live in a world filled with tiny plant sounds. While the noises are most apparent when the plants are water-deprived or have recently been trimmed, they aren't necessarily screams of agony. The popping sound seems to be caused by increased bubble formation in the plant's xylem, the tubes responsible for transporting water and nutrients throughout their stem and root systems. Listen, I'm done with science. I'm done with it. In the past week-ish, we have covered plant crying. T-Rexes having lips, don't like it, and a meatball made out of mammoth meat, which we didn't even discuss the size of. I've now seen a picture of it.

It's huge. And I think science should relax. I don't need to feel bad about plants crying. Yeah, I mean, I don't feel bad. I am thinking that perhaps, you know, the small jungle that I now have in my home is probably making a whole lot of noise that I can't hear because I'm sure it could use some water or something. So I will take care of that as soon as we finish recording. I don't know. I've learned way too much.

Science is real, Josie. I believe in it and I'm over it. And those are the headlines. One more thing before we go. Get ready to transport yourself back to New York in 1973 with Stiffed, the new podcast from Crooked Media and iHeartRadio. Radio. In this eight-part series, host Jennifer Romalani takes you on a wild ride through the rise and fall of Viva, the erotic magazine for women that rocked the publishing world. Led by a team of feminist writers and editors, Viva had it all. Full frontal male nudity, a fashion section run by Anna Wintour, and cover stars like Bianca Jagger.

Check out the first two episodes of Stiffed right now wherever you get your podcasts. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, kindly water your screaming houseplants, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about our constitutional right to serve like me, well, today is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Trey Bell Anderson. I'm Josie

Duffy Rice. And get to the polls, Wisconsin. I always want to say Wisconsin because of T-Pain. Yep, T-Pain and Justin Timberlake. Phenomenal song. I bet if Mr. Conservative wins, he's going to make that song illegal. Just kidding. That's a joke.

What Today is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Raven Yamamoto is our associate producer. Our head writer is Jossie Kaufman, and our executive producer is Lita Martinez. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kushaka.