What A Day - Vaccine Mandate, We Hardly Knew Ye

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

The Supreme Court yesterday blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to enforce a vaccine or testing mandate for private employers. Meanwhile, Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin said that they, again, will not support changing the filibuster rules to pass new voting rights measures. More than 8,000 grocery store workers in Colorado have begun a strike against their employer, the Kroger-owned chain King Soopers. Kim Cordova, head of the workers’ union that represents them, joins us to discuss their demands.And in headlines: The FBI arrested the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia for his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection, teachers in France protested the country’s school COVID policies, and Prince Andrew was forced to give up all of his military and royal titles.Show Notes:We'll be back with a new WAD on Tuesday, January 18th after MLK Day.The Economic Roundtable: “Hungry At The Table: White Paper On Grocery Workers At The Kroger Company” – https://bit.ly/3I3a84pFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It is Friday, January 14th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And this is What A Day, where we're reminding you that the study showing that cannabinoids prevented COVID only describes scenarios where you wear a big weed leaf over your entire mouth. I believe that is true. I didn't read the study at all. I read it over a stranger's shoulder on a train, but I stand by my analysis. And I endorse it. On today's show, the FBI arrested the leader of the Oath Keepers, plus teachers in France protest over COVID policies. But first, we have a lot of news out of Washington from every branch of our government. So buckle up. First, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration's attempt

to enforce a vaccine or testing mandate from going into effect for large privately owned companies yesterday. You probably remember hearing about this mandate when it was first issued in November. It would have required workers at these companies to be vaccinated or tested weekly with select exceptions. It would have applied to over 84 million workers, and the administration estimated that it would get an additional

22 million people vaccinated and prevent a quarter of a million hospitalizations due to COVID-19. But the high court voted 6-3 against it, with the three liberal justices in dissent. Yeah, and the Supreme Court has previously upheld various state vaccine mandates that have come in front of them, as we talked about before. So what was the reasoning behind their decision to not do the same thing here? Yeah, so it seems that they didn't believe that in this case, the administration had the congressional authorization to impose such a broad requirement. In an unsigned opinion, the court said, quote, although Congress has indisputably given OSHA, which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly, which is what they're claiming this was doing.

It would be really bad if more people were trying to regulate public health during a pandemic. I know that'd be so scary. Terrible. There was also a vaccine mandate for health care workers and people that work at those facilities. What did the Supreme Court decide there? Yeah. So the Supreme Court actually issued an entirely separate ruling about this mandate for health care workers. Health care workers who are at facilities that receive federal funding will still need to be vaccinated. This will affect an estimated 17 million plus workers in the field, and the administration estimates that it will save hundreds or even thousands of lives each month.

On the health care ruling, the court voted 5-4 to uphold the mandate, with Chief Justice Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh siding with the liberal justices. Yeah, and this is obviously happening with the backdrop of the Omicron variant surge across the entire country. Earlier this week, the number of U.S. patients that were hospitalized with COVID hit an all-time high. So what else is happening with the Biden administration's response? Yeah, they are trying to step it up.

So yesterday, Biden announced that the government is buying an additional 500 million tests to be distributed to Americans. So that brings the total number of tests that they have purchased to do this with up to one billion. His administration also plans to make free, high quality masks available to all Americans. So unsure if there will be a reimbursement situation for those of us who already bulk ordered KN95s after listening to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed on this show. I know I did. If you're on that boat,

I will keep you all updated because I'm very interested. Same. He's also sending military medical teams to six states where hospitals have been really overwhelmed with COVID cases. So a lot going on there. Yeah, and that is still not everything

that happened in DC just yesterday. So aside from Omicron, Biden has been prioritizing the push for new voting rights legislation. What is latest there? Yeah, it was a busy day and unfortunately not a great one for, you know, everything that is important to us. It started with something good. The House passed a measure yesterday that combined the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Amendment Act. That was passed completely along party lines, so not a hard fight in the House,

but definitely disappointing when you think about the fact that zero Republicans support it. Yep. Kind of wild, but that's not even the point that I'm trying to make. It passes the House,

then obviously all eyes go to the Senate, where Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have decided to keep doing their thing. They say they will not support changing the filibuster rules despite supporting the new voting rights measures, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense if you think about it for more than five minutes. I don't know. But after that, they had a closed door meeting with the president at the White House yesterday afternoon. Biden told reporters that, quote, I'm not sure when asked if he thinks the bills will still pass. Honestly, same, Jo.

Yeah, it's kind of where we're all at. So nothing new out of them. Just definitely frustrating news. Yeah. So everybody has said their piece about this, it seems. So what is going to happen next with these bills? So this will finally reach the Senate floor for debate and a vote from every single senator on the record. This is actually the first time that voting rights have made it to the Senate floor out of five attempts. Republicans have filibustered it every single time leading up to now. This time it only got through on a technicality, so it's just not great. We will continue to keep you updated as we learn more. I mean, I hope we have good news to share with you on this front, but that is all we know on this for now. Yes. Deep breath. Okay.

Moving to an ongoing labor story, more than 8,000 grocery store workers in Colorado have begun a strike this week. Right. So if you're listening to the show yesterday, you heard a little bit about this. They are employees of the Kroger-owned chain King Soopers and are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. Woo! That is from a video captured by a CBS Denver reporter. Gideon, can you tell us more about what is going on here? Yeah, just to recap, the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the store expired last week. The union turned down an offer that Kroger called its, quote, last, best, and final, which the company

said would raise the starting pay to $16 an hour, increase wages up to $4.50 an hour for some workers in the first year, and give ratification bonuses of up to $4,000. So meanwhile, the union's plan included a $6 an hour wage increase and new safety requirements, among other things they were looking for, but that was rejected by the company. Now, regarding those safety requirements, it should be noted here that the mass shooting that took place in Boulder last year happened at a King Soopers store where workers were among the victims. Yeah, really a red flag inducing if you're rejecting safety requirements. But go on.

I want to hear more. Yeah. So in December, the union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board contending that the company has engaged in unfair labor practices. And then this week, King Soopers actually did the same. And as the Huffington Post noted in their reporting, by striking over these alleged unfair practices instead of explicitly over benefits and pay, workers could get some legal protections against the company just permanently replacing them. You got a chance to talk with the head of the workers union, Kim Cordova. What did she tell you? Yeah, we went over a lot, but she went into more detail with me about the kind of safety

protections that they want to see in place. Take a listen. So, you know, our workers were exposed to COVID. We had several workers die from COVID, and there's been little to no sense of urgency for the company to protect them. So we've had to fight for personal protective equipment, even hand sanitizer, cleaning, sanitizing the stores, no social distancing for the workers. But not just the COVID stuff. We've seen an uptick in violent either crimes or actions by customers or folks coming into the stores that have been aggressive or have physically or verbally assaulted our members. And we had the there was a mass shooting here in Boulder, Colorado, where workers in one of our grocery stores. I mean, we had 10 innocent victims were murdered in that store.

And so even after that shooting, the company did not enhance safety. I don't I don't even have words for that. That's really awful. Yeah. And so in addition to safety, Cordova also said that wages are a big issue here. This is Kroger. King Soopers and Kroger are the largest grocers, not just in Colorado, but in the United States. Yet the workers here are mostly part time and they are barely paid at minimum wage. Our minimum wage in Denver County is $15.87, yet the company proposed wages of $16. That's 13 cents. That's not going to better anybody's life or allow a worker to find an apartment instead of sleeping in their car at night.

Right. And to her point, this strike came the same week as a really eye-opening and harrowing survey of Kroger workers nationally. Can you tell us more about what that revealed? Yeah. So it came from this nonprofit research organization, The Economic Roundtable. We'll link to this in our show notes, but it included responses from more than 10,000 workers, and it found that 14% said they had been homeless in the past year. 36% said they worried about eviction. And over three quarters are food insecure. So here's Cordova again. Workers are struggling working for these giant corporations.

And, you know, to work in a grocery store where you yourself cannot afford to buy food or quality or healthy food is shameful. Wow. Yeah. And as we've seen in tons of industries for quite a while now, but especially over the course of the pandemic, workers really seem to be asking themselves if all of this is worth it. They're demanding more because when you face death and you're exposed to, you know, COVID, you know, this type of virus that you can die from or your

family members, people are thinking, is this a good idea? Am I paid enough for this? Is this job worth it? Or you take the violence that we're seeing where you can't come to work and not be physically attacked or verbally assaulted because you ask somebody to please wear a mask or you're out of toilet paper. You know, everyone deserves to be safe and everyone deserves to be safe and everyone deserves to be paid for their work. And this is I'm glad that you spoke to them about this. I'm glad that people are hearing this. Yeah. So we'll keep following the story and other labor stories as they develop. But that is the latest for now. It's Friday, Wild Squad.

For today's Chum Check, we are rounding up the stories of three celebrity couples who, when loaded into a Hadron Collider-type device, would create a particle of concentrated media attention capable of destroying all human life. They would. First, there's the tall rapper turned tall singer Machine Gun Kelly and the mid-2000s bombshell actor Megan Fox. The pair have been dating for about a year and a half.

They announced their engagement yesterday, posting videos of the proposal to share with their closest friends, i.ee every person in the entire world mgk got fox a ring that allegedly cost between 300 and 400 thousand dollars and features both an emerald representing fox and a diamond representing mgk how romantic i will withhold my feelings about the heinous design choices at this very creative wedding ring fox's instagram post included this caption, quote, just as in every lifetime before this one and in every lifetime that will follow it, I said yes, and then we drank each other's blood.

If they documented everything else so meticulously and there's no documentation of this, I don't believe it. Yeah, where was the blood drinking? You know they would take a zillion photos of that. They definitely didn't do it. Yeah, I don't believe it. Next, a couple that is slightly more junior in terms of days of knowing each other, but could soon overtake MGK and Megan Fox in terms of total clicks aggregated is the rapper Kanye West,

known now as Ye and Uncut Gems star Julia Fox. Their first date was exactly two weeks ago, but was quickly followed with an exclusive profile documenting their second date in quite some detail in Interview Magazine. Definitely a sight to behold. Yes, bold exercise all around. For date number two. 100%. Yesterday, Julia Fox spoke more about their relationship on her podcast.

She has one. Forbidden Fruit saying, quote, For right now, I'm just living in the moment, and I don't have any expectations. It's really such a Gemini-Aquarius connection. It is very inspirational. I feel the need to just thank Kanye West and Julia Fox for dating.

That's just you. Who feels that need? And lastly, there is the couple that is probably the closest thing the celebrity PR world has to an atomic bomb. It's Kim Kardashian

and Pete Davidson. On Wednesday night, they went on a date in Los Angeles and were photographed doing their first ever public hug. Oh, wow. What a milestone. Very exciting stuff. So Gideon, my question for you, which I'm sure is almost impossible to answer. If you had to pick which of these three celeb couples are you rooting for?

Rooting for the comet, Priyanka. The comet that will take us all out in unison. No, if I have to pick, I honestly think, and maybe this is just recency bias in terms of the order that we set them, but I kind of lean like Kardashian and Davidson at this point. Really? Tell me more. There's just stuff that annoys me about the others more intensely. And like, I feel as if they are comparatively being less annoying about their specific relationship right now i think i am rooting for hate to say i hope i don't sound ridiculous i think mgk and megan okay because you know what they just are super in love and they keep delivering us these wild quotes that we can turn into games for this

podcast right pretty fun and i don't really think they're harming anybody i think they're just They're super in love and they keep delivering us these wild quotes that we can turn into games for this podcast. Right. It's pretty fun. And I don't really think they're harming anybody. I think they're just drinking each other's blood. Supposedly. Yeah, supposedly. That's fine.

Just keep doing that in peace. Your heinous ring, I don't really care. It's fine. It's really bad. It's a really bad ring, guys. I gotta see it. It's ugly. Just like that, we have checked our temps.

They are... High. They're very high. Our relationships to these couples. But we'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is now in line with his fellow Republicans because he said

that he also is not going to cooperate with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. This was in response to the Democrat-led panel asking McCarthy to voluntarily testify. Yesterday, he said he had no info about conversations he had with former President Trump leading up to or regarding that day. However, on January 11th, McCarthy reportedly admitted to House Republicans that Trump had, quote, some degree of responsibility. Oopsie. Members of the House committee are now weighing the possibility of subpoenaing him and other lawmakers to get them to comply.

Meanwhile, in other Capitol riot news, yesterday, the FBI arrested Stuart Rhodes, a tremendous mugshot, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia. Rhodes and 10 members of his group were charged with seditious conspiracy for organizing and plotting to storm the Capitol that day. The case against Rhodes and other Oath Keepers is the first time that prosecutors have filed sedition charges against any of the hundreds of people that were accused of taking part in the January 6th attack. Wow. Prince Andrew was forced to give up all of his military and royal titles yesterday

amid growing concerns over the sexual abuse allegations brought against him. The order came directly from his own mom, Queen Elizabeth II, in a statement released by Buckingham Palace. In it, the palace said that from now on, Andrew was disallowed from undertaking, quote, any public duties and from using the title His Royal Highness. The royal scolding comes just one day after a federal New York judge rejected Prince Andrew's request to throw out the lawsuit brought against him by Virginia Dufresne. Dufresne accuses Andrew of raping her when she was a minor after she was trafficked to him by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an allegation that Andrew continually denies. The Duke will likely face trial later this year after numerous attempts to avoid litigation as the rift between him and his family deepens.

Tens of thousands of teachers in France left their jobs yesterday to protest the country's school COVID policies, saying that those rules are not strong enough to protect them and their students from the virus. The one-day walkout was supported by most of the country's teachers' unions, and the protest itself is one of the biggest school protests that France has seen in decades. Teachers and their allies filled the streets and cities nationwide, demanding that authorities pick a COVID policy

and stick to it after months of changing their minds. French teachers, I feel you. In one video posted online, protesters in Nice used a bed sheet like a parachute to repeatedly toss an inflatable puppet of French President Emmanuel Macron into the air. Inventive, quite honestly. Incredibly creative. Yeah. Macron's prided himself on keeping schools open longer than most European countries have,

but his streak could soon come to an end, with the country reporting an average of 300,000 new COVID cases daily. The surge of infections is being driven in part by school-aged children, a demographic that is more likely to have the virus than French adults. It may not be as exciting as headline dressings like balsamic vinaigrette and green goddess, but the Food and Drug Administration is hoping to make French dressing cool again by deregulating it. Hell yeah. The FDA has had a strict definition of what makes French dressing French for over 70 years.

It has had to contain at least 35% vegetable oil plus some kind of acid such as vinegar, lemon, or lime juice. Nothing distinctly French in there. Yeah, I don't get it. Kind of weird. Anyway, the standard, however, has held the dressing back from evolving in the fast-paced world of salad and becoming everyone's top choice at Sweetgreen. On Wednesday, the FDA ruled that the French dressing standards can be more loose, so dressing makers can do things like create low-fat and fat-

free versions using less oil. This change goes into effect on Valentine's Day. How romantic. If you didn't know that the FDA cared about regulating dressings, they started to make strict rules about them in 1950 and stuck to the three most iconic ones at the time, French, mayo, and a wild card option just called, quote, salad dressing. That was what was ever around. You know, you just splash it on, whatever you got. Yeah, I mean, this doesn't really compete.

It doesn't really apply to me. I am a spicy cashew girl through and through. It's a little bizarre to me, though. Like, French, what does that mean? That means nothing to me. Like, you've got to tell me what the ingredients are, or else I just have no clue what's in your dressing. Right.

Spell it out a little bit more. I want to be the guy at the FDA who is working on this while, like, my buddies are on, like, the vaccine team or whatever. And I'm like, hey, we— Just having the time of your life. Right. You guys got a high-stakes dig going on there. I'm working on this while like my buddies are on like the vaccine team or whatever. And I'm like, hey, we're having the time of your life. Right. You guys got a high stakes dig going on there. I'm working on dressing.

I'm just eating salad. Yeah, I'm vibing out. Good for them. What a life. We want to deregulate all of our dressings here at WOD, I think. I don't know. Yeah, we do. And those are the headlines.

One more thing before we go. We will be back with a new episode next Tuesday because we'll be off on Monday to commemorate Martin Luther King Day. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Follow us on Insta at What A Day and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just detailed accounts of yay and Julia Fox's third, fourth and 50th like me, we haven't even made it there. We got to slow our roll. What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe.

I'm Priyanka Arabindi. I'm Gideon Resnick. And look out for the remix of French dressing. It may also get tossed into the air via a parachute, if it's lucky. What a day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Jazzy Marine and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Leo Duran and me, Gideon Resnick. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.