We look at how the campaign to unionize Starbucks is faring. More than 500 Starbucks stores have unionized since December 2021, but now the movement faces new threats as the Trump administration seeks to dismantle the Department of Labor.

We speak with Linda Martin Alcoff, a professor of philosophy at CUNY’s Hunter College who has written multiple books that explore the intersection of race, gender and class. We get her thoughts on the early days of the Trump administration and its relentless focus on purging anything it deems to be “DEI” or “woke.”

We check in with The Indy’s Amba Guerguerian. She published a major new piece today looking at how dissent has been systematically crushed at Columbia since last spring’s Gaza solidarity encampment ignited a nationwide anti-genocide campus protest movement. Amba has also been following protests that have been popping off around the city just over the past 24 hours.

We go to Queens College, where yesterday more than 100 faculty and students protested for the right to protest on their campus in the face of an increasingly authoritarian campus administration.

There’s been a sea of humanity returning to their pulverized communities in northern Gaza since Jan. 27. We talk about that and what comes next in the ceasefire process that could determine whether this genocidal war really ends or not.

We discuss the Trump administration’s stunning Jan. 28 announcement that it will “temporarily pause” trillions of dollars of already approved government spending. We also look at the overall arc of the first eight days of the Trump administration so we can help you make sense of what’s going on.

We speak with Indy contributing writer John Teufel about his latest piece about growing up in West Islip, New York. Teufel has watched West Islip, also known as “White Islip," become a MAGA bastion in recent years that is now proud to claim Daniel Penny as a favorite son. Penny is the former marine who choked homeless subway passenger Jordan Neely to death in 2023 and was acquitted on all charges in December.

Ravi Ragbir, a leading advocate for immigrants facing deportation and the co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition, won a full presidential pardon from Joe Biden, ending Ragbir’s 16-year quest to avoid being deported to his native Trinidad and Tobago. We speak with him about the pardon and the need for community power.

In the context of Trump's harsh deportation plans, we speak with Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, a broad coalition of many immigrant-rights community groups in New York.

We bring on Indypendent Contributing Editor Nicholas Powers and take call-ins from listeners who share how they feel about the Trump's second presidential term.