• Wednesday was ‘Liberation Day’ in Trump’s America. For everyone else, it was a day of sheer economic panic, as President Donald Trump unveiled heavy ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on dozens of countries, on top of a 10 percent blanket tariff on all imports. Trump billed it all as a fool-proof strategy to bring back American jobs that have moved overseas, and said specifically the levies would be a boon for unionized workers at domestic car companies. But Trump is no friend to unionized labor. He’s spent the days since his inauguration slashing thousands of unionized government jobs. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, talks about how unions are fighting back.
• And in headlines: Wisconsinites gave Elon Musk the middle finger by sending a liberal judge to their state Supreme Court, a federal judge dismissed corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and Amazon makes an eleventh-hour bid to buy TikTok.
  

• Learn more about the American Federation of Government Employees – www.afge.org/
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, April 3rd. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show asking you, my friends and listeners, when do you think the last time Donald Trump bought groceries was? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Likewise an old-fashioned term that we use groceries. I used it on the campaign. It’s such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term, groceries. It sort of says a bag with different things in it. Groceries went through the roof and I campaigned on that I talked about the word groceries for a lot. 

Jane Coaston: Like, he hasn’t gone to a grocery store since the ’70s, right? If ever. [music break] On today’s show, Wisconsinites give Elon Musk the middle finger and send a liberal judge to their state Supreme Court. And Amazon makes a bid to buy TikTok in the 11th hour. But let’s start by talking about Liberation Day, in which we finally took on our lifelong enemies, the Falkland Islands, in a rose garden ceremony featuring props, charts, and yet another reference to the old fashioned term that is groceries. President Donald Trump announced his big tariff scheme, and it is big indeed. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. 

Jane Coaston: Alongside 10% tariffs on all countries, Trump installed massive tariffs on countries he thinks have treated the United States, quote, “unfairly.” And some of those countries, well, I have questions. I mean, for one thing, at least one of the entities we’re tariffing, the herd in McDonald Islands, doesn’t have any people. Population? Zero. Another place we’re taxing with tariffs is a U.S. military base. China will be hit hard, 34% tariffs on top of the existing 20% tariffs put into place earlier this year. But many of our closest allies, the European Union and India, for example, will experience some of the bigger tariffs, as will countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, both of which export billions of dollars worth of goods to the United States. But again, some of countries chosen just seem kind of strange. For example, there is now a 32% tariff on Indonesian coffee imports, despite the fact that the United States doesn’t export coffee to Indonesia or, well, anywhere. We’re putting a 41% tariff on Syria, which has been a little too busy with a civil war to really be a big trade issue for us, I think. And the highest tariffs of 50% are on the country of Lesotho and a French territory off the coast of Newfoundland. Because I actually have no idea. This is all, to put it very kindly, not ideal and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn’t making me feel better with this advice given on Fox News to other countries. 

[clip of Scott Bessent] Well we’ll see what they do, is my advice to every country right now is do not retaliate, sit back, take it in, let’s see how it goes. 

Jane Coaston: We punch you in the face and you just deal with it. Cool? And the US stock market seemed to agree with me, with big drops across the board after Trump’s announcement. But as we talked about on yesterday’s show, Trump 2.0 doesn’t care about the stock market or your 401k or your dad’s retirement fund. He cares about the workers. He invited Brian Pannebeker, a retired auto worker and longtime UAW member, to sing his praises at the Rose Garden Ceremony. 

[clip of Brian Pannebeker] We support Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs, 100%. So Mr. President, we can’t thank you enough. And in six months or a year, we’re going to begin to see the benefits. I can’t wait to see what’s happening three or four years down the road. Thank you, Mr. president. 

Jane Coaston: But Trump doesn’t care about workers equally. While he waxed nostalgic about the great American factories of the past and something about President William McKinley, his administration is continuing to wreck the jobs and lives of thousands of unionized federal workers. Since Inauguration Day, the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have fired more than 120,000 federal employees. Those workers stretch across every federal agency, from the National Institutes of Health to the National Park Service. And with an executive order signed last week, Donald Trump has now decided to go up to the rights of federal employees to unionize and collectively bargain for better working conditions and higher wages. So I had to talk to Everett Kelly, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers. He’s been a member of the AFGE since 1981. Everett, welcome to What a Day. 

Everett Kelley: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: According to CNN, more than 120,000 federal workers have been fired since President Donald Trump took office and thousands more layoffs are coming down the pipeline. The past several weeks have been defined by pure chaos and uncertainty. What have you been hearing from union members who have lost their jobs or are scared that they will in the coming weeks? 

Everett Kelley: It’s very chaotic right now, members are very confused. They are afraid, they don’t even know how to plan, you know, next week. Some of them are being fired for no apparent reason whatsoever. It just left everybody in a state of shock and confusion. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s talk about the Trump administration’s fork in the road offer. About 75,000 people took the deal for deferred resignations. Some federal agencies are giving workers a second chance to take the offer, extending the deadline to mid-April. What has your guidance been to union members? Does the AFGE want members to stand their ground? 

Everett Kelley: At this point, we’re just kind of allowing our members to make the decision for themselves. We still don’t trust the uh fork in the road, but we decided that it’s best just let employees make that decision for themselves and working with their financial planners and legal advisors. 

Jane Coaston: I think that there are some people who don’t understand what this is doing to our country and they’re thinking like, this is what I voted for, this a smaller government that I was promised. What do you say to those people? What are some of the unexpected consequences of these cuts that will impact everyone? 

Everett Kelley: And that’s exactly the truth because it’s going to affect the services that we provide to the American public. It’s going affect the very democracy, if you will. Now, take for instance, you say you want to cut 83,000 jobs at the VA. Now that means that veterans are not going to be able to get the services that they need. Okay. You want to cut 75% of the people that inspect our food, that mean that this food is not going to be inspected or it’s going to be contracted out. And I think that’s the end game, is that this administration want to contract out these jobs. So they want to put the federal workers into a mission failure position so that they can say, look, I told you they couldn’t do this work. And so they contract it out. And who get those contracts? You know who paid for this election? 

Jane Coaston: Indeed. And the president isn’t just firing federal workers, he’s going after federal worker unions like the AFGE. He signed an executive order last week to end collective bargaining with unions that represent employees at the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, the State Department, the list goes on and on and how has this order already impacted you and your fellow union leaders’ ability to fight for your members. 

Everett Kelley: That was a very devastating attack because he put about a million federal workers in a position where they don’t have a union to speak up for them, to talk up for them. But AFGE is going to be there. AFGE has already filed a lawsuit against this action. We’re going to to be there. We are going to represent our members. But if I told you that it didn’t affect us in any way, that wouldn’t be the truth. It has. But we’re going continue. We live for our members, you know, they say it’s about efficiency, it has nothing to do with efficiency. It has to do with the fact that we have been whooping them in court. We’ve been standing up for our members. And so this is a form of retaliation. That’s what this is all about. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, the AFGE was founded in the 1930s, but I think a lot of our listeners might not be familiar with the work you all do. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the fights the organization has taken on in the past? 

Everett Kelley: We are a labor union that want to make sure that employees are treated with fairness and dignity and that there is some accountability in the federal government. We make sure that if there is waste, fraud and abuse, we point that out. We’ve done that on many occasions. We make sure that people are treated with fairness. When you start talking about promotions and stuff like that on a merit-base, these are the faults that we fault. We fault to make that employees inside of the federal government are hired based on merits and not based on the color of their skin, not based on where you live, not based on where you went to school, not based on who you know, but purely on merits. And what this administration is doing is coming in and completely tearing that down and saying, I want to be able to hire people because I like them, because you know they’ve uh donated their time to me in a political campaign. That’s the difference in what we have stood for and what this administration is doing. 

Jane Coaston: I don’t know about you, but it feels different this time, the way that the Trump administration is going after federal employees specifically across the board, whether you are working in the library system or whether you are working for the park system. Aside from the courts, what other course of action can AFGE take? 

Everett Kelley: We would have to fight this fight through the court of public opinion, because if the courts doesn’t do us justice, the only other recourse we have is for the American people to begin to realize that their very democracy is at stake. The services that the federal employees provide for them is at stakes such as, you know, Social Security, Veterans Administration, the war fighter equipment that he or she would need on a battlefield when that begin to be hampered, then the American people will stand up and say, enough is enough. I think that they are almost there. I think that the fact that you know we have been able to get some wins in court and the judge actually said to the federal government, you know you lied. These employees were not fired because they were poor performers. In fact, they were great performers. And the government, why are you not telling the truth? So I think that is coming to light with a lot of people and people are rising up. You’re seeing uh, uh, rallies across the country. These are the type of things that we are asking people to do, you know, to show their support toward federal employees and the services that they receive from the federal employees, and their union. 

Jane Coaston: Everett, thank you so much for being here. 

Everett Kelley: The pleasure’s mine. Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Everett Kelly, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

[clip of Susan Crawford] But I’ve got to tell you, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world. [cheers] For justice in Wisconsin, and we won! [cheers]

Jane Coaston: Liberal County Judge Susan Crawford defeated her conservative opponent Tuesday night in a race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. It was seen as a litmus test for democratic momentum against the Trump administration and Elon Musk. He and his allies poured more than $20 million into the race. The takeaway, money, even tens of millions of dollars can’t buy you everything because the race wasn’t even close. Crawford beat conservative County Judge Brad Schimel by 10 points. That’s a lot in a swing state that Donald Trump won by less than a point just a few months ago. Crawford said her resounding win sends a clear message. 

[clip of Susan Crawford] Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy. [cheers and applause] Our fair elections and our Supreme Court and Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale. [cheers and applause]

Jane Coaston: I think it also sends a clear message that people do not like Elon Musk. Democrats also got some positive feedback in two special congressional elections in Florida. Now, did the party’s nominees pull off a miracle and win seats Republican candidates carried by 30 points in November? Well, no. No, they did not. But they lost by less. Significantly less. In the race to fill the seat vacated by Trump’s new National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Democrat, Josh Weil, lost to Republican state senator, Randy Fine, by 14 points. And in the Florida Panhandle district vacated by disgraced former Republican representative Matt Gaetz, Democrat Gay Valimont  lost to Republican Jimmy Patronis, also by about 14 points, because we love a Hogwarts mafioso in this country. So while those aren’t wins, Democrats are taking the narrower margins as a positive. There are some signs of hope. New York City Mayor Eric Adams had a good day in court Wednesday. A federal judge dismissed corruption charges against him with prejudice. That’s court speak for the Trump administration can’t revive the charges against the Democratic mayor, which is not what it wanted. Federal prosecutors had charged Adams with bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy last fall. But in February, Trump officials argued in court that the case against Adams should be dropped entirely, for a couple of reasons. They said the charges were filed too close to the upcoming mayoral election and that the attorneys who originally filed the case had bad motives. But most notably, the administration argued Adams couldn’t do his job as mayor and enforce Trump’s immigration crackdown if he’s under criminal investigation. They also wanted the option to bring back the charges in the future. On that point, Manhattan District Judge Dale Ho said in his dismissal Wednesday, quote, “everything here smacks of a bargain, dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.” He called bullshit on the administration’s other arguments, too. Adams, who’s running for re-election this year, has maintained his innocence all along. He did so again Wednesday after the dismissal. 

[clip of NYC Mayor Eric Adams] Let me be clear, as I said all along, this case should have never been brought. And I did nothing wrong. I’m now happy that our city can finally close the book on this and focus solely on the future of our great city. 

Jane Coaston: But Adams also seems to know who really holds his fate here. At the end of his speech, he held up a copy of the book Government Gangsters, written by Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel. Adams said he would encourage all New Yorkers to read it. Do yourself a favor, New Yorkers, don’t read that book. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday that Israel is seizing territory in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to force Hamas to release the remaining hostages. Here he is in a video statement. [clip of Benhamin Netanyahu speaking in Hebrew] Netanyahu says there, quote, “We are now dividing the strip and increasing the pressure step by step so that they will give us our hostages. And as long as they do not give them to us, the pressure will increase until they do.” Netanyahu hinted the newly claimed area could cut off the southern Gaza city of Rafah from the rest of the strip. Israel has already issued evacuations for Rafah. The country’s defense minister said that some of the land captured by Israel would be added to security zones the Israeli defense forces maintain in Gaza. It comes as Gaza’s civil defense said an Israeli airstrike hit a United Nations building in the north, killing several people. Israel resumed its attacks on Hamas and Gaza in March after negotiations to extend an earlier ceasefire broke down. Amazon is throwing its hat in the ring, allegedly. According to multiple news sources, the e-commerce giant has made a last-minute bid to purchase TikTok, the New York Times first reported the story. A law that was passed with bipartisan support last year and upheld by the Supreme Court over national security concerns requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to an approved buyer or face a potential ban in the U.S. The original sell-by date was set for January. But on his first day in office, President Trump extended the deadline. The company now has until Saturday to figure out how to keep it online. As of our recording time, Amazon has not commented on the matter. It remains to be seen if ByteDance will you know bite. It has previously said it did not plan to sell the app. And that’s the news. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, check that you aren’t on a Mike Waltz Signal chat, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how, according to a new Politico report, National Security Advisor Waltz had at least 20 different Signal groups for various conflicts around the world, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and seriously, Mike, we can talk on Signal, too. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 

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